Oh, Snap
by wedelia
Summary: Peter wakes up, and he's simultaneously five years too early and right on time. Or, Post-Endgame Peter goes back in time and accidentally-on-purpose gets Steve and Tony together before the initial snap happens. And, oh, yeah—he also recruits a former-Air-Force-pilot-turned-galactic-hero, has lunch with Black Widow, and somehow befriends Nick Fury. This changes things.
1. Chapter 1

"Oof," Tony huffs. Because that's the natural response when you've just been barrelled into by a teenager with super-strength and a seemingly single-minded determination to give you a hug. Tony glances down at Peter, pats him on the back, and says, "Hey, kid, not that I don't appreciate the hug—because I do, it's nice, we should do this more often—but what's going on here?"

"I like you so much, Mr. Stark; I'd be really sad if you were turned into dust by a psychopathic purple giant from outer space," Peter mumbles.

Tony takes a moment to unpack that. "Alright. Oddly specific, but alright." He levels a concerned look at Peter. "Did something happen to make you think that's a possibility?"

A dark look flits across Peter's face, but it's gone when he says, not very comfortingly, "No. No way, haha. That would be crazy. I just wanted you to know that I would be...sad. If that did happen. Hypothetically."

Tony watches, bewildered, as the kid buries his face in Tony's shoulder and refuses to say more.

* * *

Let's go back a few hours. Or forward a few years. The distinction isn't clear.

Peter goes to bed in a guest room the night of Tony's funeral but can't find any rest. If the numbers flashing on the alarm clock beside him are true, it's technically tomorrow already. But he hasn't slept at all since the day—uh, two days—before, and even then it had only been for a few uneasy hours, his sleep troubled by images of Mr. Stark's lifeless eyes staring back into Peter's in the aftermath of heartrending battle and the memory of himself saying, "We won, Mr. Stark."

(_Did they win? Did they really?) _

He doesn't know how he _can_ rest, now that his mentor—the last of the three (almost-)father figures Peter has had in his life—has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors and is buried six feet underground.

Peter wonders, half-sincerely, if he's cursed.

Then he wonders with full sincerity what the hell is happening, because he starts to hear whispers. Disembodied ones. (Which are objectively more frightening, Peter thinks, than embodied ones, if only for the fact that if the situation gets weird—or, uh, weirder—he won't even have anything to punch.)

This wouldn't be the first time that Peter's enhanced post-radioactive-spider-bite senses have caused him to pick up on sounds that he would not have been able to hear as a regular person, but there's a definite difference between this and eavesdropping on a conversation going on a couple of rooms away. These whispers seem _close. _Like they are in the room with him.

And if they are in the room with him, he should be able to sense someone else's presence. But Peter can't see or sense anything other than the expected night-darkness that has settled over the room like a heavy blanket.

As he sits up and looks around him, trying to distinguish any odd shapes in the shadows, he hears his name repeated over and over by what sounds like half a dozen hushed voices whispering over each other, creating an effect that resembles white noise: _Peter...Peter...Peter…. _

At some point in the night it had begun raining, and the patter of water droplets on the roof nearly drowns out the insistent mantra: _Peter...Peter…. _

"What's happening?" The question is quiet, but Peter's voice still sounds loud against the murmurs.

_Peter...remember us…you held us…you fought for us…. _

A crack of lightning outside. White light illuminates a line on the floor immediately below the window. Peter sees the grains of the guest room's wooden floorboards in startling detail. _Peter…, _the whispers repeat, _we need you. _

And then, like an echo: _need you...need you...need you…need you…need you…. _

Peter shivers. There are goosebumps prickling up on his arms. He throws the comforter on the bed back and puts a foot on the floor, ready to bolt. "I don't understand."

Another crack of lightning. This time the white light spreads rapidly, filling the room and the periphery of Peter's vision until all he can see is white, and as he loses consciousness he hears, _you will...you will...you will...you— _

* * *

Peter wakes up, and he's simultaneously five years too early and right on time.

He doesn't understand what's going on. To be fair, he hasn't understood what's going on for a significant portion of the time since Dr. Strange rescued him from the Unplace Thanos' snap had cast him into, but whatever this is—despite Peter's previously-held belief that the universe couldn't get more confusing—manages to catch him by surprise

First of all, he's no longer in a guest room, but back in his bedroom in the apartment that he and May share in Queens. He knows this in an instant; he recognizes the warm vanilla scent of May's favorite candle filtering in from the living room and the texture of the pillowcase against his cheek.

Peter reaches a hand out blindly in the direction where he thinks his phone should be. Finds it. After cracking a bleary eye open, he turns it on and then blinks, disbelieving, as the screen displays a date that is months earlier than the date of the—what had Aunt May said people called it? The Decimation.

The day Peter—and half of the world's population—disintegrated. Thinking about it makes him sick.

He needs to gather more information. Peter opens up a tab for a search engine and types in a series of queries: _Thanos, Tony Stark dead, infinity stones. _

There is nothing in the results more noteworthy than some years-old articles about Tony Stark's disappearance in Afghanistan and a website advertising expensive jewelry. A search for any mentions of "decimation" yields only a dictionary entry defining the word as the killing of every tenth person in a group.

_Every tenth person_, Peter thinks. _Would that have been any less horrifying? _

All of this (lack of) evidence points him toward one conclusion: he really has traveled back in time. Before the snap. Before the funeral. Before all of the irreversible tragedies happen, so that there is still a window of opportunity for them to be avoided.

There are weeks—several of them—until Thanos is scheduled to arrive. If Peter does everything right, he may be able to stop it.

Emphasis on _may. _

And, on the topic of 'may's…

Aunt May seems years younger than she had at Mr. Stark's funeral, her face less lined for not having grieved for a nephew as well as a husband. She smiles at Peter when he pads into the kitchen (lured from his bedroom by the smell of pancakes) and says, "Someone looks like they didn't get much sleep last night."

Peter laughs. He hopes it doesn't sound nervous. "You could say that."

There are so many other things he could also say to her. He feels the weight of them in the lump in his throat while he listens to the way she hums along with the music playing from her phone as she turns back to the breakfast she's making. Peter could tell her _I'm sorry I left you _or_ I promise I won't do it again _or _I'm so glad that you haven't had to go through what the alternate-future you had to go through. _

Peter could tell her what happened. Tell her about Thanos—about the five missed years of his life—about...Tony. But he can't find it in himself to put those things into words—at least not to her. Not to Mr. Stark, either, probably. He has this urge to protect her from the awful knowledge that another version of her has already—or will have?—spent years dealing with.

He would rather not divulge all of the painful details until he can assure her that it won't happen again. So he'll wait.

But there is one person he does feel comfortable speaking with about the possible upcoming apocalypse.

* * *

"Ned, I have to tell you something." Peter is uncharacteristically serious when he says this, from his tone to the stiff way he's holding his body. He looks like he's about to share news that will shake Ned to the core.

Ned experiences a flash of horror. "You didn't break the LEGO Death Star I lent you, did you?"

"No, absolutely not, I would never!" Peter says, making a face at the idea of that.

Ned lets out a relieved breath. "Okay. Good. Man, you had me worried for a second there. What's up, Peter?"

The boys are sitting cross-legged on Ned's bed facing each other. Peter fidgets with the soft material under his hand, decides that the direct approach will probably work best, and says, "I think I just time-traveled."

Ned blinks. "What do you mean? Is this a _Groundhog Day _situation or something along the lines of _Back to the Future? _" His expression grows more concerned. "Should you even be talking to me right now? You could be disrupting the timeline."

Peter feels a rush of affection toward Ned, who he should have known would believe him right away—of course he does. He's Peter's best friend for a reason. Peter says, "It's a long story."

Then he proceeds to share that long story with Ned, piece by horrible piece. Every now and then Ned interrupts with a question about something and Peter has to apologize for being vague, since he doesn't know all of the details himself—his understanding of what went on in the five years (five minutes) when he was stranded in a not-place outside of time and reality is fuzzy, so he only has the information that he had gleaned from frantic post-battle Google searches and hearsay to go off of. And there's no way Peter can go back—no way Peter would want to go back, even if he could—to ask.

So he shares what he knows, and when he's finished the two of them sit in silence for a length of time that is longer than would normally be comfortable. Thinking.

Ned is the one to break it. "Wow," he says. "That's...that's rough. I'm so sorry, Peter. You've been through a lot since yesterday."

Peter shrugs, kind of self-conscious. The experience that he's just recounted to Ned was objectively terrible, but it's one thing to acknowledge that to himself and another thing entirely to hear someone else say that aloud to him.

He's not sure why, but something about the idea of being consoled over it makes Peter feel uncomfortable—like he's pretending to have gone through more than he actually had, like he's not supposed to be as messed up over the whole thing as he is—even though reasonably he knows that neither of those things is right.

"I'm fine," Peter lies. Then he balances it out with a more believable-sounding truth: "I'm going to do whatever I can to stop it from happening this time around."

"You should go see Mr. Stark," Ned says, kind-voiced. "He would want to know about this."

Ned's right. Peter knows he is. But another conflicted part of Peter also knows that the moment Mr. Stark finds out about the future (which Peter hopes will not be the future), he will not react in any way that Peter wants to see. Peter has thought about this—Tony will either feel guilty for not preventing the Decimation, grimly fatalistic about the prospect of having to repeat it, or some other unpleasant combination of emotions. Maybe it's better to wait to say anything.

Peter uncrosses his legs and lets his feet dangle off the edge of the bed. "I don't think I want him to know yet." He looks sideways at Ned. "But you're right. I need to see him."

* * *

In the afternoon Peter visits the Avengers compound to soothe his frayed nerves with actual physical proof that Mr. Stark is alive and well.

Getting there is a longer process than he had expected—a web here, a lengthy bus ride there, an hour or so of walking on foot after a brief deliberation over whether he should call an Uber—but Peter does it, and he doesn't even have to wait for someone to let him in, because FRIDAY recognizes his genetic makeup after a brief scan and lets him in with a cheerful, "Welcome back, Peter."

"Thanks, FRIDAY," Peter says, directing these words up at some point on the ceiling. "It's good to be back."

And it is. It really is. Once he's inside, he takes in the familiar—undestroyed—surroundings: the expanse of clean tile, the sleek lines of the windows, the tasteful modern furniture like something out of a magazine. For a facility that Peter has only visited a handful of times, it feels remarkably like a second home. Or something that has the potential to become one.

Someone's walking Peter's way from the other end of the compound. Peter doesn't pay much attention to this; he's too distracted by the still-intact building around him to be all that concerned with its inhabitants.

When he looks up, he notes—oddly disinterested, his thoughts lagging a few moments behind his eyes—that he recognizes the person approaching.

"Queens." Steve Rogers gives Peter a little nod of acknowledgment when they pass in the hallway.

"Brooklyn," Peter says back, instinctive. Because two can play at that game.

Steve grins.

The moment passes. So do they, literally, Peter going one way and Steve going the other—probably in the direction of the state-of-the-art gym.

And then….

Wait. Peter mentally rewinds what just happened. Steve is here. _Why _is Steve here? How? And since when? Shouldn't he be in Wakanda or some other non-extradition country? As Peter cycles through a list of very valid questions, he spares a second to congratulate himself on not freaking out more about having just exchanged something bordering on banter with _Captain America_. Holy shit.

* * *

When Peter sees Mr. Stark for the first time after his return from the future, all thoughts of Captain America are banished from his mind. He registers only the heartwarming Tonyness of the scene before him—the half-drunk mug of black coffee on the workbench beside a pile of messy blueprints, the freshly-shaved goatee, the subtle hints of salt-and-pepper in the hair near Mr. Stark's temples (though that will be dyed out as soon as Tony notices it).

Hearing Peter's footsteps, Tony looks up, smiles, says, "Hey, Peter—"

And is cut off mid-greeting after Peter practically tackles him into an embrace that knocks the breath out of him. "Oof," Tony huffs. Because—well, you know the drill.

After a long moment, Peter pulls back from the hug. He asks, "Mr. Stark, I don't mean to hassle you, but—what's Captain America doing here?"

Tony laughs. It's not a real laugh, but something kind of forced—as if it's covering up for a more complicated emotion. "That's a great question. I'd like to know the answer to that myself."

Peter frowns. "He just...came back? Out of nowhere?"

"It was pretty fucking surprising, if you'll pardon my French," Tony says. "But he seems honestly apologetic, and I'm man enough to admit that I'm not exactly a model for perfect decision-making myself, so I think I'm going to try to give him the benefit of the doubt. Though—just for the record—I still have a lot of doubt."

That's good to hear. Peter had expected Mr. Stark to be more resentful. Last time Peter checked, he had still seemed furious at Steve over the whole Civil War thing—and maybe that name sounds dramatic, but it's what the press had dubbed the global-headline-making brawl that had led to Spider-Man's recruitment.

For that reason alone, Peter doesn't fully regret that it happened. He could never regret something that led to him meeting Mr. Stark. But the wedge it drove between the heroes he'd looked up to since he was a kid definitely made the universe less safe (as well as being a huge bummer).

And that's when Peter has the idea.

He hasn't decided for himself yet if Steve is worthy of Mr. Stark, but he'd been worthy enough to wield Thor's hammer (which Peter is totally not finished geeking out over, by the way, just so we're clear), so he must be alright. Plus, he's _Captain America_, the comic book hero Peter grew up idolizing_. _He probably eats decency for breakfast. With a side of truth, justice, and The American Way.

(Or is that Superman?)

Anyway, Peter thinks that maybe he should...push Steve and Mr. Stark together.

They do, after all, have a lot of common: saving people, holding onto things. (Mostly grudges, but also guilt, loyalty to teammates, a stubborn sense of right and wrong, et cetera.) And they were close friends, too, for years. Longer than they were enemies.

Plus, Steve is _right there. _The fact that he's at the compound and not in hiding somewhere like Peter's convinced he was during the original timeline (unless that Mr. Stark had been hiding something major) seems like a sign.

Maybe if Peter can get Steve to stay around long enough to help more from the start the first time they have to deal with Thanos, everything that went wrong can be prevented. Peter won't miss five years of what was supposed to be his life. The universe won't lose half its population on a whim. Tony Stark won't die.

It may say something about Peter's priorities that that last one is the sticking point for him.

So Peter files the idea away. It will be plan C, for 'Cap', falling right behind plan B, 'better hope for the best'. But for now Peter intends to do what he can to implement plan A. 'Assemble.'

* * *

Peter remembers the awesome sparkly lady who had saved him in the heat of that battle—her name was Danvers, he thinks. He had seen her again at the funeral (he shivers at that word and the memory of it—the funeral), but he'd had other things (namely: a drowning-heavy-grief-guilt) on his mind that day, so he hadn't paid much attention to the details of the guests in attendance.

She had clearly been powerful. Probably _is _powerful right now, even though her name never came up in the news in the time before Thanos. (That thought seems strangely fitting to Peter—using the metric of before Thanos and after Thanos to divide two radically different eras of his life into neat categories. It works.)

Whoever Danvers is at this point in time, Peter needs to find her and persuade her to make her debut on Earth a few years earlier. He thinks he can make a compelling argument.

Peter considers going to Nick Fury to ask for her contact information, because he had noticed at Mr. Stark's funeral (and, again, the reminder that in another timeline Mr. Stark _died _makes Peter so sad he reaches for his phone to send Tony another 'hi, how are you?' text—a habit that is probably starting to get at least a little suspicious) that Director Fury and Danvers seemed to be acquainted with each other.

Here is his logical next step. It shouldn't be too hard to accomplish, right?

Wrong.

Speaking to Fury is more difficult that Peter had anticipated. The man is impossible to get in touch with—at least without consulting Mr. Stark, which Peter refuses to do on the grounds that it will inevitably lead to questions about why he needs to speak with Fury in the first place.

Peter finds himself dialing the number of the SHIELD office in D.C. and asking to be connected to Director Fury. (He knows his odds of success with this strategy aren't high, but he's desperate.)

"It's urgent!" Peter tries to explain to the person who finally answers, after he's already struggled to justify his call for upwards of a minute. "The stakes are literally life-or-death. Trillions of lives could be in your hands as we speak."

There's a pause on the other end of the line, and then a nonplussed voice says, "Please hold."

Peter growls. Hangs up the phone. Falls back against his bed and, staring up at the ceiling, thinks, _I'll just have to go find Fury myself. _

* * *

Peter maybe cheats a little. He sneaks into Tony's lab while the older man is at a meeting with the leaders of Stark Industries' R&D department and asks FRIDAY to give him access to the information for how to get in touch with Nick Fury.

"Also please don't tell Mr. Stark," Peter says, fast, casting a furtive glance around the room as if Tony could jump out at any minute and catch him with his hand in the metaphorical cookie jar.

"Tell Mr. Stark?" FRIDAY repeats. "I can do that for you."

Peter's life flashes before his eyes. "No—!"

FRIDAY laughs. "I'm kidding, Peter."

Peter has never felt so betrayed by an AI before.

* * *

A couple of days later Peter finds himself sitting at the kitchen counter of the house at the address listed in Nick Fury's file, not fully believing that his plan paid off—or that he's _in Nick Fury's house. _

"So you're the Spider-kid, huh?" Fury looks at Peter, evaluating, with the eye that's not covered by a patch. He's leaning back against a row of cabinets.

(And this is definitely the wrong moment, but Peter shelves the thought to ask him whether he's ever gone to a Halloween party as a pirate. That would be amazing. Peter imagines a curved black hat and a parrot on his shoulder that's trained to just caw swear words at people until they fall in line.)

Peter clears his throat. _Back to business, Parker. _"Yep. That's me. Though I actually prefer Spider-Man."

"I'll keep that in mind," says Fury, in the tone of voice of a man who probably will not keep that in mind. "What did you want to see me for?"

"I need to find someone named Danvers."

That catches Fury by surprise. If Peter hadn't been closely observing him he wouldn't be able to tell, but as it is he sees Fury blink several times in quick succession. "Where did you hear that name?"

"You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you," Peter says, honest. "But I know that you know her, and we need her. Something really dangerous is about to happen, and she's our only real hope of stopping it."

Fury's gaze is skeptical, but after a long pause, he seems to cave. "Alright. You want to get in touch with Carol Danvers—I'll show you what she left me."

He reaches into an inner pocket of the jacket he's wearing and pulls out an old pager. At least Peter thinks it's a pager—he hasn't actually seen one in person before. It's a kind of historical curiosity to him, like record players and the concept of VCR.

Fury places the pager on the countertop between them. "Carol gave me this transmitter to use in case of an emergency before flying off into space. I keep it on me at all times, but I haven't used it yet. Are you trying to tell me that the danger you're thinking about—which I still haven't seen any evidence of—is more of an emergency than any of the other batshit insane things that the Avengers have dealt with in the past decade?"

Peter doesn't hesitate. "Yes."

"It sounds to me like you weren't listening." Fury raises an eyebrow. "That pager is for emergencies only."

"This is an emergency." Peter's kind of tired of having to explain this to people. "The fate of the entire universe is at stake."

"The fate of the entire universe, huh?" Fury eyes him, shakes his head, and says, finally, "If you say so."

Peter does say so. "I know this sounds unbelievable, Director Fury, but I'm not making it up. This is bigger than anything the world has ever seen."

Fury still doesn't seem entirely on board, but he says, "I guess it has been a while since I've spoken to Carol. I must be getting sentimental in my old age." He picks the pager up and tells Peter, "I'll humor you."

Fury turns the machine on. Sends out the signal. Puts the transmitter back on the countertop.

They both watch as it sits there. Signaling.

Peter's not going to lie—it's more than a bit anticlimactic. "So that's it?"

It makes him feel better that Fury seems put-out, too. (In a very subtle way, of course—on Fury, 'put-out' looks the same as 'business as usual', except his posture is a little less straight.) Nevertheless, Fury turns to him and says, "I don't know what you were expecting."

Peter shrugs. "I don't know, either. Sparks? A loud noise? For all of the lights in the room to go out? Something more than…" He waves a hand in the direction of the pager, which is still quietly beeping on Fury's desk. "That."

"We're not in a movie, kid."

Peter wishes they were. If this was a movie, everything would end well.

"What happens now?"

Fury near-smiles. (This expression is 'business as usual' but with the corner of his mouth raised a few millimeters.) "We wait."

Alright. Fair enough. Peter reluctantly excuses himself after having Fury promise to get in touch immediately after the pager's message gets through.

But….

"Uh, I have one last favor to ask," Peter says, hesitating at the door.

Fury raises an eyebrow. Every feature on his face implies _Another one? _

Peter stays silent for a moment. He weighs the pros of what he's about to ask against the potential con that it will lead to the opposite of what he intends. Then he says, earnest, "Please don't tell Mr. Stark that I was here."

"You don't want your dad to catch you sneaking out of the house?" Fury ventures.

Peter sputters. "No—that's—Mr. Stark is not my father, I don't know where you got that idea, that's ridiculous." He looks shyly up at Fury. "I just don't want him to be worried."

_Goddamnit_, Fury thinks. _It's too early in the morning to be going all soft over some weirdass kid. _(It's half-past noon, in reality, but any time of day is still too early.)

Fury sighs. "Alright. I won't clue Tony in on what you've been up to." He gives Peter a stern look. "But I hope you know that I'm not going to make excuses for you if he finds out on his own."

Peter lights up. "Thank you so much, Director Fury! Seriously—I appreciate this."

"Don't mention it," Fury says. He feels like he's stepped into the role of magnanimous benefactor, and he would be lying if he said it doesn't do something for his mood. When the teenager is halfway out the door, he adds, "And, Parker?"

"Yes?"

A full-centimeter smile. "You can call me Fury."


	2. Chapter 2

"On your left," Steve says, before he passes them for what has to be the tenth time since they started jogging less than twenty minutes ago.

Sam turns to Peter with a long-suffering look. "Can you believe him? He always does this. That star-spangled motherfucker—"

"Language," Steve calls from up ahead, not out of earshot yet.

"Shut up!" Sam shouts back. Then he addresses Peter again. "Sorry you have to put up with that. Steve enjoys being a pain in the ass."

"Yeah," Peter says, noncommittal. He has no firm opinion on this topic. He guesses that it was annoying having to fight Cap in Berlin, but finding an excuse to steal the shield was also pretty cool, so. It's whatever.

Peter's not sure how he got roped into running with Captain America and the Falcon (and very occasionally the Winter Soldier). It has become a bizarre routine. Bizarre as in it's bizarre how normal it feels.

One minute Peter thinks hey, I should probably get to know Captain America more if I want to try to repair his relationship with Mr. Stark, and the next Captain America is saying "Just call me Steve" and doling out invites to the park every other morning. It's enough to make Peter suspicious that things may be going too smoothly.

At least it's a nice day for having a crisis. Since spring began a few weeks ago, the park near the Avengers compound has grown lush with new grass and returning yellow-green leaves, and Peter hears birds chirping over the sound of his own light footfalls on the pavement.

It reminds him of how the city was after Thanos. The reason behind the change had been devastating, and that sense of devastation overshadowed everything else, but there had been something beautiful about the way Peter peered through the passenger window of Aunt May's new car as she drove them both home for the first time after Peter came back and all of the streets had been lined with flower pots overflowing with leafy foliage and vines climbing up the sides of fences.

With half of its population missing, the world had apparently taken up gardening. Peter guesses the Decimation had been a stark reminder of the importance of sustainability.

There had been a difference in the air quality then, too—probably a direct result of all of the flora. Peter might have only noticed it because his senses are constantly dialed up to eleven, but the day after he had come back to Queens post-Thanos, he had sat outside on the doorstep of the apartment he'd lived in for a decade but which had changed so much overnight as to be nearly unrecognizable, alone with his thoughts, and breathed in. The atmosphere somehow tasted sweeter. Lighter. Fresher.

Wholly unworth it.

Peter had eventually gone back inside, because the neighbors across the street were having a noisy post-Snap party. Listening to other people's joyful reunions with their loved ones had forced Peter to confront a painful truth: unlike them, he would never be able to reunite with Mr. Stark or Uncle Ben or his parents or any of the unnamed people he would undoubtedly lose going forward. (Peter knew that he was only biding his time until the next loss; if life had taught him anything, it was that he belonged to that category of people who just can't catch a break.)

He hadn't known then that he would get a second chance.

But now he does, and Peter appreciates the fresh-enough air as he rounds the corner of the park. He smiles at Sam jogging next to him. "Hey, thanks for letting me come with you guys. I probably should have said that a while ago. I know this is kind of a special Team Cap thing."

Sam smiles back. His earlier disgruntlement seems to have faded, and now in its place is kind of open friendliness. "We're glad to have you. There's always room for one more.

Peter opens his mouth to respond—

"On your left," Steve says, breezing past them.

Sam swears.

* * *

Maybe Peter should feel guiltier that he's made FRIDAY an accomplice in his scheme to save the world by getting Tony and Steve together. (Partially. His plan for world-saving is more complex than that, but this is definitely an item on the agenda.) As it is, though, he takes full advantage of the high security clearance that Mr. Stark had given him months ago out of a place of trust, not expecting that one day Peter would use it to play back a grainy surveillance video.

He's aware that it isn't the most ethical thing to do, but needs must. And right now what Peter needs is to get a better idea of what he's dealing with re: the adult superheroes currently giving each other a cold shoulder on par with the subzero Arctic ice that Steve had been thawed out of.

So Peter resorts to some light espionage.

FRIDAY seems to be taking to it with enthusiasm. "Do you need video from any other time? I can get that for you."

Peter looks up from the laptop that he has the footage timestamped from last week pulled up on and smiles at some point on the ceiling. He knows the AI can't see it, but it never hurts to be polite. "This should be good for now. Thanks, FRI."

"No problem, Peter."

Back to the laptop: Peter hasn't pressed play yet, but the image on the screen is promising. He recognizes the back of Steve's head and the curve of his broad shoulders, and in front of Steve—partially blocked from the computer camera that the video is taken from by Steve's body—is Mr. Stark, who looks upset.

It's not a good thing that Mr. Stark is upset; Peter believes wholeheartedly that Tony should be as happy as possible at any given moment. But it's a good thing that Peter may be able to use this to find out more about the argument that led to the angry tension that's lingered between the two men for the past week or so.

Just this morning when Steve and Peter had come back to the compound from the park—Sam had taken an alternative route to his room on the other side of the building—they'd run into Tony in the hallway, and Peter watched, uncomfortable, as the two men exchanged icy greetings.

"Rogers," Tony said. His tone was off—it seemed hard, like he was trying to be casual but missing the mark.

Steve gave a smile that seemed equally forced. "Tony."

They stood there in the hallway, silent and unmoving, for a solid three seconds—Peter counted—before Tony cleared his throat, met Peter's eye, and said without looking at Steve, "I'm going to steal the kid from you, Cap. I want to get his thoughts on an idea I have for the spider-suit."

Peter seized the opportunity to exit the situation gratefully, and that had been that.

But the barely-concealed animosity won't gel well with Peter's plan, so he has to do something about it. He can't just leave Steve and Mr. Stark to sort out their relationship by themselves; they don't exactly have the best track record. And Peter needs to find out what he's working with.

Hence the video.

"So, I hear that you're bringing Barnes with you," Tony-on-screen says. He's using that same faux-casual tone from the hallway.

Oh. Peter can see where this is going.

Steve's shoulders stiffen. "I thought we were on the same page about this. I'm so sorry about your parents, Tony, and for not telling you immediately after I found out—"

Tony tenses.

"—but you seemed like you were ready to forgive him yesterday when I brought it up."

Tony makes a series of expansive gestures with his hands as he says, "Of course I did! He's your back-from-the-dead childhood friend who fought in a war with you and was brainwashed by Hydra for seventy years. I'm not heartless. But that doesn't mean I'm ready to have him in my home. Where I live."

Steve seems to slump. He lets out an exhausted-sounding breath. "I can't send him away. He'll be here tomorrow morning; he's already on the plane from Wakanda."

Tony frowns. "Look, Steve, I don't want to be the bad guy here. I'm not going to kick him out. But it would be nice if you spoke with me about things before doing them." He gives a laugh that has an edge of bitterness in it and then says, "Or, you know, before I find a video of 'things' murdering my parents."

Steve reaches out, maybe to touch Tony's arm—but Tony jerks it away. Then he excuses himself. "Sorry, Rogers, I'm needed elsewhere. You know how it goes. Tech to invent, meetings to avoid. I'm a busy man."

Peter watches as the Tony on the screen walks out and Steve is left behind, still. So still that after a second Peter checks to see if the video has ended by itself—but no, it hasn't, Steve is just standing there staring at the door that Tony walked out of.

"Well," Peter says to the empty space in his room at the compound. "The good news is that there's nowhere to go but up."

Over the speakers, FRIDAY says, "That's the spirit!"

Peter's caught off guard. He'd forgotten she was there. He looks up and flashes her a thumbs up she won't see.

* * *

Contrary to what Flash would have Midtown High believe, Peter does have a Stark internship; it's just not a conventional one. Most Stark Industries interns don't get picked up from New York City and driven to the Avengers compound on a regular basis by Happy Hogan, for instance—and they definitely don't work personally with Tony Stark.

It's a good thing Peter has never been ordinary.

On this particular afternoon, he arrives at the lab—where Tony is already wrist-deep in the machinery of some new device that looks like a vacuum cleaner (though Mr. Stark would probably be miffed if Peter told him that)—with a purpose in mind.

Peter waits until they've been working for nearly half an hour to bring it up. He passes Tony a tool from the other end of the workbench and says, "Sorry if this is a sensitive topic, Mr. Stark, but...what were things like between you and Steve? Before Berlin?"

"I see how it is," Tony says, wry. "He's Steve, and I'm still Mr. Stark."

Peter smiles. He looks down at the web-shooter he's refining. "You're different."

And Peter can't articulate the reason why, but that's true. There's something about who Tony is to Peter that makes a special name seem necessary, like how Aunt May is Aunt May. Yes, sure, Peter could drop the formality—but then something essential would be missing.

So he'll keep using Mr. Stark instead of Tony.

Tony leans back from the device he's working on and squints at it, probably looking for some fine detail to adjust. He asks, "Where'd this question come from, Underoos?"

"I'm just curious," Peter says. Totally unsuspiciously, he hopes. "And you never gave me an answer."

Tony's quiet for a long moment. He holds the device up and tilts it at an angle to get a closer look at some piece of it. Eventually he says, "Steve and I have always had our differences, and that's probably an understatement. But for a while, it was...good. I can't believe I'm thinking of aliens invading New York as being a simpler time, but back then when the Avengers were new, it felt like it was us against the world. As a team. And we were winning."

Tony's voice goes nostalgic when he says this, and it makes Peter more determined than ever to ensure that his plan works. He has to.

The is no other option.

While they're on this topic, Peter says, "Hey, I know things are complicated between you two right now...but I really want them to work out. I think they will."

There's a hint of ruefulness in Tony's voice when he says, "I hope you're right."

* * *

Peter first heard of the Avengers at the same time as the rest of the world—during the 2012 alien invasion. But unlike the rest of the world, Peter had been there.

Even now he remembers vividly the loud clang of Chitauri armor against the metal of the skyscrapers they'd crashed into; the rubble cluttering up the streets; the panicked voices and occasional screams of the people around him trying to run out of danger.

The moment when the Avengers saved him.

Maybe he was reading too much into it—as a kid he had probably gone over and over the memory until he'd mentally amplified it into something larger than what had actually happened—but it had been significant.

Peter can't remember the circumstances exactly (which is weird, because so many parts of the memory have stuck with him in nearly photographic detail), but he had been walking home with Uncle Ben from a late lunch and they had somehow been separated in the chaos.

It had been terrifying. One second Peter was holding Ben's hand—a habit that he had insisted he had outgrown, except he hadn't argued too much when Ben suggested it, because Peter was just as afraid as Ben was of getting pulled apart by the rush of frantic people running away from the city street they were turning down—and the next, they were jostled at all sides, and Peter's hand was empty. He'd been left standing alone, scared, his uncle pushed along with the crowd.

Peter had known he should move, but his feet stayed rooted to the ground. He was paralyzed by a sudden anxiety that he was lost and it was his fault for not holding on tight enough to Uncle Ben's hand and maybe no one would be able to find him and—

Clang. Peter turned. His heartbeat raced, and the world seemed to become impossibly slow as he saw one of those huge metallic flying things headed in his direction—

And a weird jet carrying Captain America and a couple of other people in suits that Peter didn't recognize flew in, and the alien was blasted out of the air and onto the street, where it landed with a shattering sound.

"Be careful, kid," one of the people in suits—who Peter would later discover was Hawkeye—shouted to him, and then the jet was gone.

Peter, breathless and relieved, had hurried over to the relative shelter of a nearby shop and laughed at his luck.

Ben found him there a few minutes later.

In the years that followed, Peter grew up. And when he wasn't busy going over to Ned's place or carving out a niche for himself in the extracurriculars at school, he kept tabs on the Avengers. He got notifications if they were spotted together in Manhattan, made the news for some kind of charitable donation, or something else happened along those lines. Like most kids in post-Avengers New York, Peter maintained a healthy level of fanboyishness where superheroes were concerned.

Part of the reason he had been so excited to discover his superpowers—besides the obvious, which is that they're superpowers , and how could it be anything other than mind-bogglingly cool that he had transformed in fewer than twenty-four hours from a garden-variety nerd into someone with the ability to climb up walls unassisted—was the idea that he could use the powers to be like his heroes.

Peter had spent years entertaining not-so-brief daydreams about Captain America appearing at his doorstep and using that authoritative voice from the school PSA videos to offer Peter a spot on the team.

Tony Stark had shown up instead. It was everything Peter hadn't known he wanted—even better than a daydream, because it was real.

Now Peter got to see who the Avengers were when they were their authentic, private selves, out of uniform and out of the public eye. So far he's only really met the people in Mr. Stark's orbit—Tony himself, Rhodey, Pepper—but since coming back in time, that's changed.

Steve, Sam, and Bucky have been confined to the Avengers compound for the foreseeable future as the team of lawyers Mr. Stark hired finishes clearing their names. It seems like it will take a while (as it probably should), but Peter suspects that if Thanos is handled deftly enough, the saving-the-world thing might help win public opinion over to their side and speed things up for them.

Peter has done what he can to try to know them better while they're here. He rationalizes this to himself by thinking that he can't come up with a strategy for fighting Thanos without knowing all of the players in the fight, but really he's curious and wants to scratch an itch that he's had since he was an eleven-year-old dressing up as the Hulk for Halloween.

(Young Peter had adored the Hulk. Science had been his first true love, so the idea of a superhero who also held seven PhDs appealed to him—and Peter could also relate to the feeling of wanting to smash stuff. Especially on those days when he came home frustrated from school because Flash had been picking on him and Ned again, or because either Mother's Day or Father's Day was around the corner and Peter had been on the receiving end of another teacher's sympathetic voice as she told him it was okay to make cards for his aunt and uncle instead.)

So Peter knows now that Steve is methodically working his way through a literal list of pop culture experiences he'd missed out on during his time under the ice, from Star Wars to Parks and Recreation. And that Sam gets cranky if there's no orange juice in the fridge for breakfast. And that Bucky, who Peter is still secretly (or, okay, less-than-secretly) intimidated by, likes to sing old music in the shower. That had helped a bit with the intimidation thing.

(Peter had walked past the area of the compound where Bucky's room was and overheard him crooning along to something by Bing Crosby—thanks, super-hearing. Peter had been unable to meet Bucky's eyes for a couple of days afterward, paranoid that the fact that he'd eavesdropped on what Bucky thought was a private moment would be written all over his face.)

Anyway, Peter knows all of these things.

He also knows that the only way to defeat Thanos is through teamwork. The Avengers can't do it alone—and they stand no chance divided. Peter has to do more than bring in Carol; he needs to bring the whole gang back together if he can.

(Except for Clint. He retired to live on a farm with his wife and kids, and Peter respects that too much to mess it up for him.)

* * *

"You're the one who originally brought the Avengers together," Peter says, apropos of nothing, glancing over at Fury.

They're sitting in Fury's car together on a stake-out of a suspected Hydra base. Fury had shot Peter a few meaningful, discouraging looks on the way here, but the teenager had insisted on tagging along anyway, because Peter Parker is nothing if not persistent.

A box of donuts sits on the dash between them. Fury pulls a glazed one out and, directly before taking a bite, says, "Is that a question?"

Peter considers this. He settles on, "It's half-question, half-observation."

Fury finishes the donut. He reaches over for one of the napkins in the stack tucked under the box and wipes off his hands. A little cloud of sugar-dust drifts to the ground. "Damn," Fury says, frowning at it. "I hope that doesn't get into the seats."

"I have a proposition for you, Mr. Fury," Peter says while Fury inspects the leather for crumbs.

Fury looks over at him. "First of all, Parker: call me Fury. We've been over this. Mr. Fury is my father. Second: using the word 'proposition' to describe something won't make me more inclined to take it seriously."

Peter smiles, caught-out. "It was worth trying."

Fury waits for Peter to continue.

He doesn't.

Fury rolls his eyes, laments the fact that he has to do everything by himself if he wants anything to get done, and asks, "What's your proposition?"

Peter sits up straighter. "Oh! Right."

He moves in his seat so he's angled toward Fury and says, "I want you to help me get the team back together."

"You're joking." Fury's voice is flat. "I knew I would regret this, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon."

"I'm not joking," Peter says. "You don't have to be involved if you don't want to, but I'm going to try to reassemble the team. I think they're better together." Peter gives Fury an earnest look. "And I think we're better together."

Fury sighs. This fucking kid. "Okay. Fine."

"Yes!" Peter grins at him. "Thank you so much, Mr. Fury—"

"Fury," Fury says resignedly.

"—this is going to be incredible, you have no idea. You and me, kicking ass, taking names, bringing in superheroes—"

"Peter," Fury interrupts. "This won't be as glamorous as you're thinking. Or as easy. It takes a lot more than excitement to bring in the Avengers."

Peter knows that's a valid point. But it's not going to stop him from being excited.

"What were they like? The Avengers?" Peter notices the nearly palpable skepticism coming from Fury and adds, "I've heard stories about them—of course I have—but you were actually there when they were just starting out. That must have been amazing."

Fury leans back in his seat and eyes the Hydra base in front of them idly. "It was something, alright." He glances sideways at Peter. "Have you ever had a cat that had kittens? Managing the Avengers was like having six energetic kittens in my house and trying to keep them from climbing up things they're not supposed to be on, fighting each other, and damaging property."

"Aw," Peter says. "Does that mean you're the mother cat in this scenario?"

Fury scowls. "No."

Yes, Peter thinks. He has this adorable vision of a cat version of Nick Fury with a little black patch of fur over one eye.

Then Fury spots movement at the door of the building they're watching, and it's go-time.

* * *

On the bright side, it seems like the Avengers are almost assembling themselves.

Natasha shows up a month or so after Steve and the others do. When Peter finds out from something that Mr. Stark says, absent-minded, while they're working together in the lab, he's thrilled.

"How could you not tell me sooner? Or immediately? This is awesome. I've wanted to meet the Black Widow since, like, fourth grade. I did a school project on her one time."

Peter catches what he said and mulls part of it over: school project. Hmm. He could be onto something.

Tony looks like he can't decide whether he wants to laugh or smile. "A school project on a high-profile assassin? How did that work?"

Peter puts down the piece of tech he'd been tinkering on and grins. "I studied the parallels between the physics of ballet and the Black Widow's fighting style. Her technique is amazing—it's an art."

It really is. Peter has spent hours playing back shaky phone recordings of the Widow and trying to distinguish how much momentum must have been behind her breathtakingly precise turns, kicks, and punches to generate the force required to break noses and knock grown men out cold. There's a beauty in the mathematics behind it.

He would be lying if he said his own style wasn't subtly modeled after hers. Natasha fights with the bold ingenuity of a Van Gogh, and Peter's a humble Post-Impressionist.

"Actually, Mr. Stark, this reminds me of something," Peter says, deciding to take the idea he's just had and run with it. It's totally fabricated, but it may help him get away with some much-needed reconnaissance. "I want to interview you guys for a school project."

"What?"

"It's for my history class," Peter says, really committing to this. "We get to choose a topic that had a significant effect on American culture, and I want to do mine on the Avengers. Do you think I could talk with everyone about how they remember the Avengers initiative?"

Tony puts down the gadget he's working on. He says, "I guess I can't see why not."

* * *

First up on Peter's list of people to fake interview: Black Widow. They meet together in the kitchen at the compound for lunch, because it's most convenient for both of them—and also because Natasha is still technically a fugitive from the law who can't go out to a public café.

"Hi," Peter says when he sits down across from her at the table. His voice cracks. It's so embarrassing that he thinks he wouldn't mind if he was Snapped right this second.

(And then feels like a monster for thinking that, which sends him down a terrible shame spiral.)

Don't blow this, Peter thinks. He probably only has one shot to impress her, and he'll be upset if this doesn't turn out to be the beginning of a badass spider-themed friendship.

Natasha smiles, taking pity on him. There is still a kind of latent danger to her—Peter's spidey senses thrum to attention as he takes in her sharp edges and the way she holds her body like she could take down an opponent with a reflex—but with this new expression she seems to soften. Peter doesn't get the feeling that she's a danger to him.

"It's nice to meet you, Peter," she says.

Don't get flustered, don't get flustered…. "It's n-nice to meet you, too, Ms.—um—" Ugh, Peter, you had one job. "Would you rather go by Ms. Romanoff or Widow or…?"

Natasha's smile widens. There's an amused gleam in her eye. "Natasha is fine."

That will take some getting used to. Nevertheless, Peter grins. "Awesome. I can work with that." He drums his fingers against his knee to let out some of his nervous energy. "It really is good to meet you—one spider to another."

They had kind of met already, if one counts fighting on the same side during a clash between superheroes as meeting. Peter doesn't.

"Tony said you had some questions to ask me?"

"Yes," Peter says. "That's—um—that's true. Definitely. Okay, so my first question will stay off the record, I've just been dying to know for a long time...what happened in Budapest?"

Natasha laughs. She leans in closer, places an arm on the table, and says with the air of someone bringing a co-conspirator in on some great mystery, "That's a long story."

* * *

Peter also asks to interview Bucky and Steve together, ostensibly to learn more about the Howling Commandos. Really to learn more about them as individuals.

Only Steve shows up. "Sorry," he says, as he slides into the chair across the table from Peter. "Buck's doing physical therapy on his arm today."

Peter assures him that this is fine, and then he asks Steve to tell him about the Avengers, which Steve does. Peter listens in rapt attention to Steve's version of the story of how he woke up from the ice seventy years later than he expected (which is way more than five years, put into context, but Peter feels a kind of sudden, visceral sympathy anyway) and met the team. When Steve gets to the part where he met Tony, he trails off, seeming conflicted.

"Mr. Stark is a good man, and I'm lucky to know him," Peter says, because this seems like the right moment for it, and he wants to get this message across. He hopes Steve picks up on the seriousness in his voice as he says it, because Peter means every word. "We both are."

"I know." Steve says it like he means it, too, with a warmth that Peter doesn't expect but is pleased to hear.

Listening to Steve talk about the team as it was before circumstances—and their own stubbornness—conspired to tear it apart, Peter finally realizes that if his plan to mend things between Steve and Tony succeeds, it won't be a love story. It will be the story of a family coming back together.

* * *

Peter goes out as Spider-Man, and it's one thing in his daily life that doesn't feel off-puttingly normal. It's a welcome reprieve from a school day of pretending that chemistry tests and dealing with Flash are the most challenging things he has to grapple with. And there's something comforting about how unpredictable patrols are: Peter never knows when he'll have to stop a mugging or when the most action he'll see is helping a confused-looking kid find their way back to their parents, so he's usually thinking on his feet instead of thinking about his problems.

"Peter," Karen says. The sudden voice in his suit makes Peter startle. He nearly drops his churro off of the ledge he's sitting on, but he catches it before his dinner is lost to the street. "FRIDAY has forwarded a video for you."

Peter frowns. Is that a note of disapproval in Karen's voice? He knows that spying on Mr. Stark probably crosses a line (or several), but it's for a good cause.

At least FRIDAY agrees with him.

"Play it from the start," he says.

"The kid doesn't like seeing us fight," Tony-on-screen says, kind of begrudging. "And I think he has a point. We should try harder to actually get along instead of just pretending that we do."

Steve-on-screen looks hopeful. He smiles, holds out a hand, and says, "Truce?"

They shake on it.

It's a bit too much like a business transaction, but they can work on that.

* * *

Peter has been handling everything well—very well, he thinks, considering that he's only a couple of weeks removed from a reality where he had arrived five years late to a world that moved on without him—but sometimes he still feels off.

As if all of the buildings in New York have moved two inches to the left and Peter's the only one who sees it.

And Peter thinks it shouldn't bother him as much as it does, but...it does.

When he swings by the Mets' stadium, he remembers how it had looked in the news articles he'd found online after five years of neglect, the bleachers covered in a layer of green, unnervingly empty aside from that. He remembers the boards over the windows at Delmar's and the teary embraces on the same sidewalks where people are walking now, fast, phones held up to their ears, eyes fixed on the traffic lights and the store signage above the crowds, not knowing in five years the places where they're standing might be devoid of anyone at all.

It doesn't seem right that nobody else remembers. Peter half-wishes that he didn't have to, either—but then he reminds himself that it's for the best, that's he's using the remembering to erase the thing that he has the memory of, and he almost feels better about it. Almost.

* * *

In the early hours of a morning after one of Peter's long solitary overnight stays in the lab at the compound, working on tweaks to the formula for his web fluid, Peter steps into the shared kitchen area and finds that Natasha has had the same idea.

Peter yawns around a quiet, "Good morning."

Wordless, Natasha pours some of the contents of a nearby kettle into a mug that she grabs from a drying rack by the sink—Peter's favorite, a pale blue thing with speckles and a smooth texture that Peter loves—and slides it across the counter toward him.

He stares into the liquid depths of it as if it will be able to give him the answer to why he woke up feeling so inexplicably sad.

(Okay, maybe the sadness is explicable. But Peter doesn't want to think about the explanation. He's done with it. He was only in the future for a few days—hardly enough time to justify being so torn up about it weeks later. Right?)

"What's going on with you?" Natasha asks, picking up on his sober mood. She takes a sip of her tea and Peter watches the steam rise up in front of her concerned expression.

He feels guilt twist in his chest at the thought that there's nothing technically stopping him from telling her the truth, but he's about to lie to her anyway.

She'll probably be able to detect it.

And here is another thing Peter feels guilty about: in the past couple of weeks, Peter hasn't been as involved with Mr. Stark as he usually is outside of the occasional companionable moments working together in the lab. There have been no lunches out to get shawarma or rambling phone calls asking for homework advice. Peter has cut back his interaction with Tony to the minimum of what he can get away with without drawing suspicion.

This probably doesn't make much sense—after all, shouldn't Peter want to spend as much time as possible with the man he'd seen die and who he now miraculously has the chance to save?

But something holds Peter back. He can handle being around Mr. Stark during his internship when they're both focused on their work, but he worries that if he stays around Mr. Stark for too long, Peter will give in to the urge to speak and all of the details about the future will come flooding out of him. All of them, including….

That's not something Peter wants to risk right now. He doesn't feel ready to tell Mr. Stark about...that.

Anyway, he needs to come up with a cover story to distract Natasha from his poorly-disguised internal conflict. Fast. Peter says the first thing that comes to mind. "You know Steve and Mr. Stark pretty well."

Natasha nods. "I would say so."

Peter clears his throat. "Um. Would you be interested in helping me play matchmaker for them?"

There's a stretch of silence. Natasha seems taken aback, but then she grins and says, "I've been trying to set Steve up on a date for years . I'm in."

"Nice." Peter grins back.

She takes another sip of her tea.

Peter takes a sip of his, too. It's good. His favorite mug is, as always, wonderfully smooth between his hands, and the chamomile reminds him of the stuff Aunt May makes on rainy days.

"Also…," Peter says, because now seems like as good of a time as any to ask a question he's been wondering about since he met Natasha. "This may be out of line, and I totally understand if you don't want to give me an answer, but...why did you come back here after everything? I'm really happy that you did—you're seriously amazing, and it's been an honor to know you, ma'am—um, I mean, Natasha—but—"

"Breathe," Natasha reminds him, fond. She sets down her tea. "Why did I back here to all of these problems when I could have stayed out of it, changed my identity, and led a peaceful life?"

"Yes."

She takes a second to consider her answer. "Do you know that story of the spy who came in from the cold? He went so deep undercover that he couldn't trust the motives of anyone he worked with anymore, and the more he found out, the more he realized that his whole life was made up of layers of deception. There's a lot more to it, and I'm simplifying, but eventually, the spy was faced with a choice: he could go to safety, or he could follow the girl he loved." Natasha smiles, and Peter thinks it may be the softest she's ever looked. "I know it sounds kind of cheesy, but I love this team. This life. Everything that I've built here...I think it's worth coming in from the cold for."

Peter doesn't know what to say to that. He feels like the moment may be weightier than he's capable of handling. He lifts his mug, raises it toward her, and says, "Do you want to toast to that?"

Her smile makes the corners of her eyes crinkle. Natasha raises her mug, too. "To coming in from the cold."

The mugs clink together.

Peter thinks it's fitting that when they drink the tea inside is still hot.

* * *

Peter goes over to Ned's place that afternoon to discuss everything that's going on.

"Okay," Peter says, bringing his hands together. A notepad covered in scrawling handwriting sits on his lap. "Here's the plan so far."

They go over the plan. The bare outline of it hasn't changed much since Peter saw Ned last—it's still A) assemble, B) hope for the best, C) get Tony and Cap together. But there have been a few updates since they've seen each other, and Peter shares those before wrapping the conversation up.

"As soon as we can bring in Carol and Thor, we'll go find Thanos." Saying that makes Peter exhilarated and nervous at the same time. He feels like he's at the top of a roller coaster staring down at an upcoming steep drop. "It doesn't make sense to wait after that."

Peter taps the back of his pen against the notepad. "I feel like we're forgetting someone."

"Oh!" Ned remembers. "Ant-guy."

(Speaking of Ant-guy: Scott Lang is currently busy having something like a crisis of his own.

"You're Cassie," he says, dumbfounded, to the very mature-looking teenage girl sitting on his couch. She just so happens to be the spitting image of how Scott imagines his daughter will be in five years, down to the freckle pattern. "From the future?"

Cassie-from-the-future smiles. "Hi, Dad."

"And my Cassie—"

"Is at Mom's house as we speak," Cassie finishes for him. "I remember it."

Scott thinks he should probably sit down. This is a lot to take in.)

Back at Ned's apartment, Peter shrugs. "That's okay. We can probably do this without him. Thor and Carol are the main two we should try to find."

"And is Operation Ironcap still on?" Ned asks.

Peter winces. "We really need to come up with a better name for that. But yes."

* * *

Natasha and Peter have created a list of strategies to get Steve and Tony together. Most of the ideas are Peter and Ned's, and Natasha goes along with them because she thinks they have the potential to make her laugh.

There's the sending both men flowers apparently from each other technique, to start with. That mostly just confuses them. Steve doesn't know what to do with his bouquet of red-and-white chrysanthemums, and Tony puts his delphiniums in a vase in the lab and frowns at them every now and then when he looks up from work.

Then they try the classic "tell them to meet at a place under false pretenses—and, surprise, they're actually meeting each other" maneuver; for this one, having Natasha as a partner comes in handy. She persuades Steve to be in the dining area at five to eat with her, and Peter uses a similar tactic with Mr. Stark.

When Steve and Mr. Stark arrive downstairs, a semi-romantic meal for two has been set up and the people they're expecting never show. It's not very subtle, but FRIDAY helpfully informs him that they seem to be having a pleasant conversation over dinner. Peter counts it as a win.

Also, memorably, there's a day when Peter convinces FRIDAY to get Steve and Tony stuck in one of the compound's elevators together for about an hour. In hindsight this isn't the best move, because Mr. Stark spends the rest of the afternoon after they finally escape from the elevator examining the computer systems and trying to pinpoint what went wrong. Luckily for Peter, FRIDAY isn't a snitch.

* * *

And Peter still likes to think that he is handling everything well—definitely, totally; there's absolutely no lingering sense of distraught grief here—but one day he tosses awake in the middle of the night with his breath caught in his throat, his heart beating so hard that it must be making a valiant effort to rocket out of his chest, and a mind full of the remnants of a fading vivid dream about finding Mr. Stark dead in his workshop.

So maybe Peter's not as fine as he pretends to be.

He stumbles in the dark across the apartment to May's room, retracing steps that he had taken more times than he can count all of those years ago in the hard months after his parents died. He says, quiet, "Sorry to wake you up—I'm probably too old for this—but...can I get a hug?"

He hears a soft "Oh, Peter", and then Aunt May pulls him into her arms like he's a kid again. They stay there for a while like that.

* * *

Fury calls Peter the next morning. It's a Sunday. Peter hasn't gotten up for the day yet. He rolls over in bed and pats down the surface of his nightstand until his hand lands on his phone, which Peter answers with a groggy, "Hello?"

"I have a lead about where to find our missing Norse god."

"Oh," Peter says. He didn't expect this to happen so soon. A little jolt of trepidation brings him a bit closer to being fully awake, and he hates that he doesn't completely mean it when he adds, "That's great news."

Fury hmms. "Don't get ahead of yourself. We still need to go get him."

"Right."

And that's where the complication lies: if Thor is off-world like Peter suspects, it will be a difficult trying to bring him back to Earth. They'll need some way to travel into space.

Peter knows only one person who may have the technology and the funding to get them there on short notice.

* * *

Running in the park a couple of hours later on one of his regularly-scheduled outings with Cap and co., Peter can't help but be preoccupied with brainstorming possible plans to retrieve Thor that don't involve having to come clean about the time-travel thing to Tony. He's not having much success.

Sam bumps a shoulder against his. "What are you thinking so hard about, Parker? Are you going to finally lap Steve and show him what it feels like to be 'on your left'-ed?"

Peter can tell this is a fantasy that Sam himself has entertained once or twice.

Bucky, jogging up behind them, lifts an eyebrow. "You do know that Peter has enhanced abilities too, right? He probably could run as fast as Steve if he wanted to."

Sam slows down. "What?"

Oh, no. Peter has been hiding that. Or not hiding, exactly, but...selectively omitting. He's paced himself to Sam's speed this entire time. Peter grins sheepishly at his running partner and offers up a "Sorry?"

"You've got to be kidding me."

"I thought it would be rude to leave you behind," Peter says, sincere. "And you're a great conversationalist! I like listening to your VA stories."

Sam groans and says again, "You've got to be kidding me."

Bucky smiles. He claps his nonmetal hand on Sam's shoulder. "Tough luck, pal."


	3. Chapter 3

Thor doesn't know why he's following directions from Loki. By this point in his life, Thor should probably be wise enough not to fall victim to another of Loki's pranks. But his brother had been so convincing, and Thor is a trusting idiot when it comes to Loki, so he agreed. And now—

"There it is," Valkyrie says, eyes fixed on some point outside the window.

'There' is not Earth, their ultimate destination. The 'there' Valkyrie's referring to is the resort planet Loki cajoled Thor into stopping at for a couple of days to give the people aboard the ship a break from the monotony of living in the same crowded, colorless ship for weeks on end. Even Korg is getting restless, and he's made of stone.

All this is to say that Loki's argument had been persuasive.

Thor had put up a halfhearted protest: "We're already only a few days from Earth. Why not wait until we get there?"

Loki countered that with, "Who knows how stressful things will be on Midgard? We could be negotiating for a place to stay for months. Don't you think our people should get to enjoy themselves while they can?"

And so Thor had given in.

"We're here?" Banner looks up from where he's sitting a few yards away. Piled on the floor in front of him are small stacks of homemade cards for the game he's playing with Heimdall and some of the children. (Uno, if Thor remembers correctly. Banner spent several days teaching it to the Asgardians.)

"Apparently."

_ "Yes," _Banner says. The children cheer along with him. While Heimdall instructs them to go tell their parents the news, Banner abandons his stack of cards to stand up and get a closer look out the window.

The resort planet looks so much like Earth that it makes Thor nostalgic, so Thor imagines its effect on Banner is even stronger. He spends a long moment staring out at the glimmering blue water covering large swathes of the planet's surface and then turns, beaming, to Thor.

Banner says, "It's been so long since I've been on a vacation—you don't even know. It's always been 'hey, Dr. Banner, we can't give you time off because we need you in the lab' or 'don't go to the beach, Bruce, what if a crab bites you and you Hulk out around the civilians?'"

"Unbelievable," says Thor, though he definitely believes that. "You deserve to relax, my friend."

Thor privately hopes that any crab-like animals on the planet will have the sense to leave Banner alone.

"Thanks, Thor," Banner says, sounding touched. He shoots one last lingering look at the planet. "I have to go get my swim trunks."

Thor starts to ask where Banner got swim trunks, considering that they've been stuck together on a ship without access to a place that sells clothes and Banner had arrived on it without any of his own, but before Thor can the other man is already through the doorway and on his way to his quarters.

Thor will save the question for later.

* * *

Later, Thor will have many questions.

For instance: he has one while standing in the lobby of the thousand-room hotel that has been reserved for the passengers of the Asgardian ship.

"How did they know we were coming?" Thor asks. He turns to Heimdall, expectant, because this seems like the kind of development that would be in Heimdall's wheelhouse.

But the answer to his question comes from Loki, who says, "I called ahead."

Thor levels a hard look at his brother. "How did you call ahead? You're not allowed inside the transmission room." Thor glances at the people around him: Heimdall, Banner, Valkyrie. "Did one of you let Loki in the transmission room?"

Valkyrie raises an eyebrow. Heimdall remains straight-faced. But Banner…he avoids meeting Thor's eye, and his posture goes stiff.

Thor sighs. "Really, Banner? You? I thought better of you."

"In my defense, I didn't really let Loki do anything," Banner says. "It was more like Loki tricked me into looking the other way while he let himself do something."

Loki smirks.

The receptionist behind the counter in the hotel clears his throat. "Do you still want the rooms?"

Thor drops his scowl when he turns away from his brother and says, resigned, "Yes, we'll take them."

* * *

The next question comes up like this:

"This is so nice," Banner says. He's stretched out on a towel with his arms crossed behind his head, and he has somehow acquired sunglasses in the time between getting off the ship and claiming a place on the shoreline of this alien beach.

It's similar to the beaches Thor remembers from Earth, except the air is far less humid, and it smells more like fruit than brine. It's refreshing.

They've only been on-planet for an hour, but Thor already has to begrudgingly admit to himself that maybe Loki was right.

"It is nice," Thor says. He squints out at a hill-shaped thing in the distance and thinks he should ask Banner where he got the sunglasses. "What is that?"

"Hmm?" Banner props himself up on an elbow and turns to look at the hill-shaped thing. "Oh, that. It looks like a volcano."

Thor hums. "I wonder why everyone is walking toward it."

"Yeah," Banner says, absent-minded. He moves so he's lying on his back again. "That's weird. Maybe it's some kind of ceremony."

Thor settles back into his beach chair and closes his eyes. The warmth of one of the planet's suns seems to seep into his skin to make him calm. Lethargic.

Loki's idea was not a total disaster this time. Thor will have to tell him that, after waking from a quick nap….

"Thor," Banner says. His tone is calm, but in a deliberate way that sets Thor on edge. "I think we've got a problem here."

Thor opens his eyes and sits up in his chair. He follows Banner's gaze with his own. And—oh. Yes. That is a problem.

The volcano is erupting.

* * *

Back in New York (and a few days back in time), Peter and Fury sit across from each other in a booth at a diner. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that Fury sits, and Peter does a nervous fidget thing.

A waitress comes by to ask what they'd like to drink.

"I'll take an orange juice," Fury says.

"Sure thing, honey." She turns to Peter. "And for you?"

Peter's distracted by the fact that he just witnessed someone call Nick Fury honey and the world did not implode. "I'll, um, I'll have that, too. Orange juice."

She smiles. "Coming right up."

"Huh," Peter says, when she's gone. He looks across the table. Fury's expression has been schooled into something inscrutable. "I didn't think you were an orange juice guy."

Fury glances up from the menu in his hands to shoot Peter an unamused look. "Am I?"

Peter shrugs. "Before we got here, I would have guessed you were a guy who drinks his coffee black and has a single, unbuttered slice of toast each morning for breakfast while reading the newspaper. You know, classic grumpy detective stuff. But now I'm having some doubts."

Fury lays his menu down. "I didn't ask you to meet me here today so we could talk about my breakfast routine, Parker."

"Of course not, sir."

Fury plows ahead, ignoring Peter's comment. "I asked you to meet me here so we could talk about the Asgardian you insist on bringing in even though he's off-world and hasn't been seen in months. I hope you know what you're doing, kid, because if you don't, this will have been a colossal waste of resources."

There's a silence. Peter eventually catches on that he's meant to defend himself. He says, "I do know what I'm doing. Mostly. I know that Thor is important, and we'll need him."

The waitress arrives with orange juice. She asks if they're ready to order, but they've barely looked at their menus since they sat down, so they need another couple of minutes.

When the waitress leaves again, Fury meets Peter's eye. "I'll let you tell Tony we could use his help," he says. "I have a feeling he'll be more likely to listen if it comes from you."

And Peter nods, because that's reasonable. Of course Peter will be the one asking. This should be something he is okay with and able to do.

He wishes his emotions would get the memo, because as soon as he thinks that Peter just feels this anxious dread.

Fury says, "Now, let's get down to business. Several hours ago I received a transmission from a ship claiming to be an Asgardian vessel…."

* * *

"Why are you so twitchy today?" MJ asks at school the next morning.

Peter startles. Then he laughs a little, looks around as if to make sure he's not being watched, and says in a voice that's more high-pitched than normal, "What? I'm not twitchy. Why do you think I'm twitchy?"

"Peter," Ned says. "She has a point. You are being twitchy."

_ Et tu, Ned? _

Peter glances down at the open textbook on his desk and pretends to concentrate. "I don't know what you guys are talking about. I'm just really into, uh…"—he scans the page for whatever it is he's supposed to be interested and makes a face— "late twentieth century demographic shifts."

MJ gives him a pointed look but mercifully drops the topic.

* * *

"You don't have to do it," Ned says, later. He says it quietly, because he and Peter are standing together in the storage closet attached to Mr. Harrington's classroom, and they don't want to be overheard. They're technically supposed to be at P.E. right now, and the only reason they're getting away with this is that Mr. Harrington's gone for a meeting. "Maybe Captain Marvel is enough."

"But what if she isn't?" says Peter. "And we don't even know if she'll show up in time."

Ned's silent. Then he steps closer, puts a hand on Peter's shoulder, and says, serious, "Whatever happens, I'm your man in the chair. I've got your back."

Peter smiles. "Thanks, Ned."

The door to the storage closet swings open. Ned's hand drops, and both boys turn, deer-in-the-headlights-like, to look at...Flash.

At least Flash seems just as confused as they are. "What are you guys doing in here?"

"Dude, what are _ you _doing in here?" Ned asks.

"That's a good question," Peter says. "What are you doing here, Flash? And how do you know that we don't have permission to be here?"

Flash looks between them with narrowed eyes, but he shuts the door.

Peter listens to the sound of footsteps on tile as Flash walks away and lets out a relieved breath. "That was a close one."

"Yeah."

He and Ned make eye contact then burst into poorly-muffled laughter.

* * *

Peter knows he has to do it. Happy picks him up from school that afternoon, and over the course of the drive to the compound, Peter stays unusually quiet. It's so noticeable that Happy starts sending him concerned glances around the ten-minute mark.

Peter spends the length of time it takes to walk from the car to Tony's workshop trying to psych himself up. _ Just do it, Peter. Tell him. It's easy. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. _

As soon as he walks through the door of the workshop, Peter says, "Mr. Stark, I have something I need to talk with you about."

Tony looks up from the project he's working on. His hand hovers over a blue holo-screen. When he sees the expression Peter's wearing, he asks, "Is this the part where you tell me why you've been avoiding me?"

That isn't the response Peter expected. He shakes that off.

"I haven't been avoiding you," Peter says. "I've been busy."

"Busy." Tony sends him a skeptical look. "Uh-huh."

Peter bristles. "I know you feel responsible for me, but there are some things I have to handle on my own."

_ For a given meaning of 'on my own'. _Peter has, after all, sought outside help.

"Why don't you want me to help you?" Tony presses. "Whatever this thing between you and Fury is—and, by the way, we need to address how you and Nick Fury are on speaking terms, because that was a huge surprise when he called me yesterday to say you needed to ask me about something—it's clearly important to you. I don't get it. Help me out here. Why have you been acting weird lately?"

Peter can feel the answer burning through him. "Because you die."

A silence.

Peter wishes he could take the words back, but he can't. They've been said. They hang in the air, ominous, like storm clouds in the moments before rain.

Tony misunderstands. "I...okay. I am getting older, but I don't plan on dying anytime soon. You don't have to worry about me, kid."

"Not like that."

"Like what, then?" Tony sees the stricken look on Peter's face and says, softening, "Peter. Let me help you. I promise I'm not going anywhere."

Peter blinks past a sudden sting in his eyes. He feels the build-up of potent, irrational anger. "Don't make promises you can't keep. You're going to—you _ did _ die, right in front of me, Mr. Stark, and I can't stop thinking about it. Sometimes I close my eyes at night and I _ see _it; I can't stop seeing it, because it won't leave my head, and—" Peter looks away. "I missed you so much."

"You're going to have to explain this to me, kid, because I'm still lost," Tony says. He walks around to the other side of his bench and stops when he gets within arm's reach of Peter. "Start from square one."

So Peter does.

It takes a while to get the whole story out. Peter tells Tony about skipping the field trip, fighting Thanos, waking up from the Decimation to fight Thanos again, attending Tony's funeral, and waking up in the past to fight Thanos _ again _, except this time he is the only one who remembers that Thanos had ever happened.

Sometime between the funeral part and the time travel part, Peter gets choked up. He would be embarrassed, but he thinks that it's justifiable under the circumstances.

"Hey. It's going to be alright," Tony says. There's an intentness in his eyes that lets Peter know he means this. "I'll do whatever I can to keep that from happening, Pete, I swear—"

"I know. I trust you. I'm just—well. You've never met Thanos, Mr. Stark. You don't know what it's like. And I'm scared that no matter what I do, the same thing will happen again."

And maybe Peter should be scared. It's not like Tony's best efforts had prevented what had happened the first time around.

But then Peter feels guilty for thinking that, because Tony had saved everyone in the end. How ungrateful was it to think that the best efforts of the savior of the universe weren't enough?

(It's weird to think of Tony that way. It's easy to connect him to the word 'hero', but Peter hesitates to use 'savior'—it seems too distant, idealized, martyr-like, standing out in contrast to the reality of Mr. Stark: heroic, yes, but also close and flawed and breathtakingly alive. Peter doesn't want Tony to become the savior of the universe; he wants to save Tony instead.)

"Why are you telling me this now?" Tony asks. "I'm glad you did, but is there something else I need to know? Did something happen?"

Peter says, "Oh, um, about that. Do you think you would be able to get us to space?"

* * *

A few minutes later:

"You just happened to have a spaceship lying around in your garage?" Peter asks. He's staring up at the beautifully crafted ship that has apparently been sitting in a building outside of the compound this entire time.

"It's not like that."

"Uh, it kind of looks like that, Mr. Stark."

"Okay, first of all, this isn't a garage. It's a state-of-the-art storage facility."

"A garage," Peter says under his breath.

Tony sends him a look. "I heard that. And don't tell Thor I told you this, but one time we got drunk together and I made him promise to bring me a spaceship from Asgard. This is that spaceship."

"Thor can get drunk?"

"Is that really the most relevant question here?"

* * *

Peter convinces Tony to let Steve go with them.

"He's never been to space before, Mr. Stark," Peter argues. "And he could come in handy if something goes wrong and we need some help up there."

After several more minutes of Peter clumsily attempting to persuade him, Tony gives in. "Fine. If Cap wants to go, he can go."

Of course Steve wants to go. It's space. Steve had gone under the ice before Sputnik had even launched, so space to him is even more of an exciting uncharted territory than it is to Tony and Peter.

Still, Steve's hesitant when Peter asks. "Are you sure Tony said yes to this?"

"He's cool with it," Peter assures him. "I just checked."

Steve smiles. "Alright. I guess I'm going to space."

* * *

Things move fast after that. Peter clears the trip with Aunt May—he makes it sound much less dangerous than it probably will be, and Tony backs him up—and packs a duffel bag to take with him on the ship.

It feels more like he's going to camp than to space all the way up until he's about to get into the ship. That's when the doubt hits.

Peter maybe should have thought this going-to-space thing through more before committing to it. As he stands at the door of the Asgardian spacecraft, Peter realizes with a kind of sinking feeling that he's about to go back into that vast black infinity where he'd felt his heart lurch and then disintegrated while Mr. Stark watched.

It's not a nice thought.

But Peter steels himself. He can do this. He's sure he can. It's not the same thing at all as last time, and that's not going to happen again. Besides, what's that thing therapists talk about? Exposure therapy? Maybe if Peter exposes himself to going up into the place where he kind of died, he will eventually stop thinking about the kind-of-dying part.

That's the hope, anyway.

_ Band-Aid method _, Peter thinks. He steps inside the ship. Nothing world-shattering happens. Peter breathes a little easier.

* * *

Then it's launch time. Tony makes sure that his passengers have properly fastened their seatbelts—which are very similar to Earth-style seatbelts for a ship made on Asgard—and then gets in the pilot's seat to send them into the air.

"Are you sure this is safe?" Steve asks, frowning at the way the armrests of his seat rattle.

"Define 'safe'," Tony says.

"That's not reassuring."

Tony catches on to the real alarm in Steve's voice and, when he speaks next, he's lost the flippancy. "It'll be fine, Steve. This is a genuine Asgardian tech. They know what they're doing."

A piece of luggage slams against the wall of the compartment it's been stowed away in. Steve grimaces.

Peter starts to wonder if it was a good move to invite Steve. Hopefully turbulence won't get in the way of the Plan™.

* * *

They spend a little more than a day on their way toward the coordinates where the transmission said to meet, but eventually they get there.

"So," Tony says. "I'm going to use this ship's tracking device to see if I can detect the source of the signal."

Peter feels like he should do something to contribute, but it seems like Tony has this handled.

After a few minutes of work, Tony grins. A circle on the navigation screen in front of him has locked on to something on the surface of the planet. "Found them."

* * *

Thor glares at Loki. People are running past them from all directions. Screams fill the air. "Did you do this?"

"Why is your first instinct to assume that I did this?" Loki asks. "I'm hurt, brother."

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because you thrive on chaos?"

"That is true," Loki admits, tilting his head to the side in a way that Thor thinks makes him look very punchable.

"Argh—!"

"Hey—!"

Valkyrie pulls them off of each other and says, "You're both infants. Focus."

Thor runs a hand through the back of his hair. "You're right. This is no time to squabble. We can deal with whatever Loki did later—"

"I didn't do anything. You're the one who lunged at me, you oaf—"

Thor clears his throat. "We have to get everyone back on the ship. Immediately."

Banner speaks up. "Uh, I think Heimdall may be taking care of that."

* * *

Somewhere else on the beach, Peter Quill is helping a man with weird golden eyes usher people onto a ship.

"What did you say your name was, again?" Quill asks.

"Heimdall," says Heimdall.

"Listen, Him-dull, I hate to be demanding, but my ship was right next to the volcano when it went—" Quill uses his hands to mimic an explosion. "Do you think my team could tag along with you guys when you evacuate?"

"I will have to speak with my king first," Heimdall says. "But I think that can be arranged."

Quill glances over his shoulder at the lava rushing steadily closer to this side of the resort. "Hopefully sooner rather than later."

* * *

By the time Tony brings the ship close enough to the surface of the planet that they can get a visual on what's going on down below, enough lava has flowed out of the volcano that it's very clear a rescue mission will be necessary.

"I think I saw something about a teleporter in the manual," Tony says, scanning rapidly through the options on the screen he's just pulled up. "I'm not sure how to use it, but it shouldn't be too different from Star Trek, right?"

"Uh," Peter says. "I'm not sure if that's how it works, Mr. Stark."

"Star Trek," says Steve, mostly to himself. "I think that's on my list."

Tony finds the button he's looking for. "Okay," he says. "I've picked up on the vital signs of a group of people in the area where we think we saw Thor. Here goes nothing."

It takes a second for anything to happen after the button is pressed, but soon there is a wave of light and a static noise, and then several people are standing in a previously empty area of the ship. Thor is one of them.

"Wow," says Peter. "That _ was _ like Star Trek."

Tony says, "Hey, Point Break. Long time no see."

Thor stumbles forward, disoriented. "Stark. It's good to see you."

"Speaking of seeing, what happened to your eye?"

Thor scowls. "My sister."

"I have so many questions," Tony says. "But first: we need your help."

Peter inches closer so he can hear as Tony gives Thor the extremely abbreviated version of the situation they're dealing with.

Thor's unconvinced. He frowns, steps closer, and says in a voice low enough only to be heard by Peter and Tony, "I don't know if I can afford to be distracted. I have a responsibility to my people. I can't fail them."

"You won't," Peter says.

Thor gives Peter a nonplussed look, as if he's only just noticing he and Tony aren't alone in this conversation. "Stark, why did you bring a child with you?"

Peter doesn't appreciate being spoken about like he's not there. "I'm not a child, Mr. Odinsson," he says. "I'm sixteen."

Tony winces. "You're not helping your case here, kid."

Thor laughs. "I am fifteen hundred years old. I know that sixteen is young—even on Earth."

"That's not important," Peter says. There's a kind of anxious urgency buzzing inside of him. He wants to get back to the crucial issue. "Thanos is coming."

"Thanos?" A woman standing nearby snaps to attention. Peter can't tell for sure, but he thinks the green of her skin pales. "How do you know that name?"

"Yeah," says a raccoon—wait, what? Peter does a double take, but yes, that's a raccoon—next to her. "How do you know that name? And what do you mean, 'Thanos is coming'?"

Tony looks to Thor. "Who are these guys?"

"We're the Guardians of the Galaxy," says the raccoon.

"This galaxy?"

"Yes, this galaxy. What other galaxy would we be talking about?"

"Hey, it's not like the name is very specific. There are lots of galaxies out there. I was just wondering why I hadn't heard of you, if you're meant to be guarding us."

"It's a big galaxy."

"But you're the guardians of all of it?"

"Maybe not, but 'Guardians of Two-Thirds of the Galaxy, More or Less' doesn't work as a name."

Things go on like that for longer than anyone involved would probably want to admit.

* * *

Tony and Thor make contact with the ship controlled by Heimdall. All of the Asgardians have thankfully made it back on board unharmed along with a man called Quill who gets excited when he learns that they're headed to Earth and makes Tony promise to tell Gamora he says hi. Eventually it's decided that the two ships will travel together back to New York, and they can sort out everything else in a day or so when they get there.

Bruce Banner's the final person in the group that got beamed up. He was hidden behind Gamora and the raccoon, but Peter eventually spots him and says, awed, "Woah. It's you."

Bruce doesn't seem to pick up on the awe part. His expression falls and he says, "Yes. I'm the Hulk." He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "But don't worry, I've got the big guy under control—you're safe."

Peter frowns. "No, I mean—it's _ you. _Dr. Banner. Wow. I never thought I'd meet you! Well, that's not true, I guess I kind of thought I'd meet you after I met Mr. Stark, but that was more of a wish than an actual thing that I thought would happen, and I didn't expect it to go like—"

"I see you've met Bruce," Tony says, coming up from behind Peter.

Bruce looks at Peter evaluatingly. "You know Tony?"

Tony answers for him. "Of course he does. This is Peter, my protégé."

"And teammate," Peter says. "Sort of."

Bruce looks between Peter and Tony. "We're recruiting teenagers now?"

After Tony has explained himself and then wandered back over to the helm of the ship to resume his captainly duties, Peter says, "Also, Dr. Banner, I don't know if even Mr. Stark knows this, but...I got my powers from radiation, too. Kind of."

"Kind of?"

"A radioactive spider bit me. It's a long story," Peter says. "And, uh, speaking of long stories, would you be interested in helping me with a school project?"

Peter and Bruce spend most of the return trip discussing the more scientific aspects of superheroing. They both get really into it, and Peter loves it because this is something he doesn't get a chance to enthuse about very often—he could bring the topic up with Mr. Stark, probably, but they're usually busy with the nuts and bolts (or lines of code) of whatever their current project is.

With Bruce, Peter doesn't hesitate to launch into his theory about how the radioactivity in the spider's venom altered his physiology, and he and Dr. Banner bounce ideas off of each other about the possible crime-fighting applications of gamma rays.

* * *

At the helm of the ship, Steve says, "I mean it when I say I want to fix things, you know."

Tony's exhausted in more ways than one. He blinks rapidly against the heavy feeling of his eyelids (because now is not the time to be falling asleep, damn it, even if he has been up for nearly twenty hours) and turns to face Steve. "I thought we've been over this."

"Yeah," Steve says. "But I feel like you still don't trust me yet." He reads the dark look in Tony's eye and adds, "I get that. I know I haven't made it easy for you. But I miss the way things were, back when…."

The corner of Tony's mouth jerks up. "Back when the most complicated problem we had to deal with was how to get you adjusted to the twenty-first century?"

Steve rolls his eyes. "It didn't take that long. Just because I didn't use one of your StarkPhones—"

"I can forgive using an Apple phone—you didn't know any better, you were a victim of either savvy advertising or poor judgment on the part of whichever SHIELD agent gave it to you, you're not the one to blame there—but you sent me _ e-mails, _Steve. From your phone. When the text messaging app was right there."

"What's wrong with e-mail?" Steve grins. "Thor and I used to send each other electronic letters all the time. They're not as good as messenger ravens, of course, but they get the job done."

"You're not as funny as you think you are, Rogers."

"L-O-L," Steve says. "See, Tony? I know textspeak."

"Get away from me, you troll. I didn't miss you."

Steve's grin changes subtly but noticeably into something fonder. He says, "Liar."

And the word almost sounds like an inside joke.

* * *

Sometime later, Peter tells Dr. Banner goodnight and moves to sit closer to Tony, who has a navigation screen. And—equally important—a portable charger. Peter plugs his phone in and spends some time watching the screen as stars flit by.

"Wait, I just thought of something," Peter says when they're about an hour away from landing.

Tony's brow furrows. "What is it?"

Peter turns to him and asks, totally serious, "Won't the Asgardians need passports?"

Tony takes a second to process that. Then he laughs, shakes his head, and says, "Sometimes I wonder how you became a vigilante."

What's that supposed to mean?

Tony catches the expression on Peter's face and softens his smile into something that looks less amused. "You're such a good kid, Peter. It's a good thing you got into this line of work, because the world needs more people like you." Then his smile turns amused again. "But wow, you're such a rule-follower. You and teenage-me would never have gotten along."

"Hey," Peter says. "I'm not a rule-follower. I break rules all the time. Last week I skipped decathlon practice to go to a movie with Ned, and there was that time I ditched a meet to go fight—"

Tony just looks at him.

Peter slumps. "Okay, I see what you mean."

Seconds pass. Tony has almost gone back to monitoring the navigation system when Peter adds, "Just for the record, though, teenage-you would love me. I bet you were a huge nerd."

"I'm wounded," says Tony, throwing Peter an exaggerated injured look. It's quickly replaced by a smile, though, and he says, "But you're right. I probably would."

* * *

A/N: I'm used to AO3, so I'm not sure how to reply to reviews on this site—but please know that I read and appreciate all of them!


	4. Chapter 4

When they get back to Earth, Fury stares hard at Thor for a solid five seconds, gestures at the god of thunder's eyepatch, and says, "Is this a joke?"

Peter realizes the similarity there and has to bite his lip to keep from grinning. It doesn't feel very respectful to laugh about this kind of thing. Eyes were lost. That's serious.

Thor does grin. "It's very real. I heard that losing an eye is all the rage this season."

"And everyone knows how vain my brother is," Loki says, stepping out of the ship behind Thor.

"Shut up, Loki."

"Loki?" Fury's voice goes sharp. "What is Loki doing here? He wasn't part of the plan."

"There's more," Tony says, glancing over his shoulder at the doorway of the ship. A rumpled-looking Bruce Banner inches sideways into view and waves.

Fury turns back to Tony and asks, "Anyone else?"

Before Tony can respond, Loki moves forward. "Director Fury, I know that in the past you and I have had our differences—"

Fury glares.

Loki takes a cautious step back. His hands come up at his sides. "Alright. Fair enough."

Then there's a crashing sound inside the ship, and a man's voice shouts, "Groot, stop that!"

The people standing outside hear a petulant "I am Groot!" right before a _walking tree _—and Fury sometimes wonders how his life isn't actually some bizarre dream—falls out onto the landing pad. Then the tree looks up and, suddenly shy, says, "I am Groot?"

"Oh, great," Fury says. "There's a tree, too."

Peter winks. "Wait until you meet the raccoon."

Fury looks at him for a moment and then says, stone-cold, "I think you should see Dr. Banner about that eye twitch, Parker."

"Um, Mr. Fury, you know that was a wink—"

"It could be a sign of an underlying health issue."

And that's the moment when Heimdall's ship, which had been following behind, makes its own landing.

* * *

"So obviously some things went more according to plan than others," Peter says, minutes later, when he, Tony, and Steve have pulled Fury aside for a debrief.

"Obviously," Fury repeats.

Peter doesn't appreciate the sass. "I'm sorry about, uh, the Loki thing. If it helps, we didn't know he was around either until he beamed away from Heimdall's ship onto ours."

"He's definitely the god of mischief," Steve chimes in.

"Captain," Fury says, giving Steve a little nod of acknowledgment. "Welcome home. You've been gone for a while."

Everyone understands that 'gone' does not mean 'to space' but 'into exile'. Steve colors slightly and says, "Thank you, sir."

Tony jerks his head in the direction of the group of Asgardians gathered around a bickering Thor and Loki at the other end of the small field surrounding the landing pad. "It seems like a lot of people are coming home. We'll have to set up some kind of program to help the Asgardians get settled."

Fury nods. "Of course. I'll talk to Agent Hill about setting that up." His brow furrows. "But why are there so many Asgardians here?"

When Steve answers, he uses what Peter calls his Captain America Voice—because it sounds confident and trustworthy like the voice Steve uses when he's ushering civilians to safety or giving orders. The Captain America Voice seems to come out whenever Steve is talking about something that's tragic or otherwise serious. (The last time Peter had heard it had been in the aftermath of the Sam-finding-out-about-Peter's-speed thing, but that's a story for another time.) Anyway, Steve says, "Asgard has been destroyed."

Peter feels unaccountably guilty. It's not like there's anything he could have done to change Asgard's fate—the realm had been destroyed before Peter had returned to the past, and it was out of his control, anyway—but that doesn't keep him from wishing he could have saved Asgard anyway.

Fury wears a grave expression. He nods again, reaches for his phone, and says, "I need to call Maria."

* * *

Peter thinks he should try to get to know some of the people they've brought back. So, sometime after most of the Asgardians filter back onto their ship and the others head into the compound, Peter finds the Star Lord standing by one of the modern-looking couches Tony's interior designer had picked out.

"Hi! I don't think I ever introduced myself. I'm Peter." Peter holds a hand out for Quill to shake.

Quill eyes it. "No, I'm Peter. Come on, kid, I'm like twice your age. I have dibs."

Peter grins. "I've been on the planet longer, though."

Quill frowns, but he shakes Peter's hand. "You know what? Fine. You can be Peter. Star Lord is a cooler name anyway."

"No offence, Mr. Quill, but does anyone actually call you that?"

Rocket cackles. "Good one, kid."

_When did he get here? _Peter wonders.

"Mr. Quill," Quill echoes, disgusted. "That's terrible."

"It's your name," Peter says.

Quill frowns again. "It makes me sound like an old man."

"Well…," Peter says.

"Are you trying to imply that I'm an old man?" Quill asks. "Really?"

Peter exchanges a knowing look with Rocket and says, "Uh, on the trip here you kept making references to movies that came out before I was born."

"How dare you," Quill says. "Footloose is timeless."

Peter adopts a faux-serious expression that's betrayed by an amused glint in his eyes and says, stepping closer, "If you need someone to talk to about acclimating to the twenty-first century, you should go to Steve. He has a lot of experience with that kind of thing."

Quill reaches into one of the pockets in his leather jacket and pulls out...an MP3 player. "Oh, yeah? If I'm so outdated, how do I have a Zune?"

"A what?"

"Are you kidding m—?"

"Peter," Gamora calls from the other side of the compound's communal living space. Both Peters turn to face her. "Stark says he can introduce you to Kevin Bacon."

Peter hears a sharp intake of breath, and then Quill rushes over to Gamora and Tony to ask if Tony was being serious. (He was.)

Peter pulls out his phone to Google who Kevin Bacon is. The name sounds vaguely familiar.

* * *

The Asgardians are fun. Many of them are (understandably) tired of being cooped up on their ship, so Peter spends the rest of the afternoon in the field outside the compound teaching Heimdall and several of the others how to play baseball (with Steve's help, because the man's childhood crush on the entire roster of the Brooklyn Dodgers led to his having an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the sport). It turns out that the all-seeing eye thing comes in handy when trying to gauge the right moment to swing the bat.

"That's so awesome," Peter says, when Heimdall reveals the secret behind his incredible batting average.

Heimdall looks amused.

"Hey, Queens!" Steve's getting restless on the pitcher's mound (which is just a patch of dirt they all agreed to pretend is a mound). "Stop distracting him. We're playing a game here."

Peter steps back into the catcher position. "Sorry!"

* * *

Peter has to go to school the next day. He took the last two days off under the pretense that he came down with a cold, but he's running out of sick days and doesn't want to get even more behind in his classes if he can help it...though it's a bummer to leave behind his cool second life with the Avengers to go back to being normal Peter Parker.

At least he gets to see Ned.

"So how did it go?" Ned asks, keeping his voice low. They aren't in a storage room this time, thankfully—they're standing at a lab table taking turns pouring chemicals into a beaker and observing the reactions. (There's more to the lab than that, but neither of them is paying much attention.)

Peter finds the meniscus and jots down the volume of the solution on his worksheet. Then, when he passes the paper to Ned, he says, "We got Thor."

"Yes!" Ned holds out a fist for Peter to bump. "I knew you would do it. Congrats, man."

"Thanks. I was kind of worried for a while there," Peter says. "And...Mr. Stark took the news surprisingly well."

Ned lowers the bottle he'd been about to tip above a measuring cup. "How much did you tell him?"

"Everything." Peter watches as the solution in the beaker changes color, going from clear to a dramatic, murky blue. "He knows about the time travel and the, uh…."

Peter's confronted it already, but he still doesn't like saying it aloud.

"The dying," Ned says for him.

"Yeah."

"I hope that didn't make things awkward," Ned says.

Peter shrugs. "There hasn't been much time for it to become awkward, I guess. It was just 'hey, Mr. Stark, I've been inexplicably sent back from a future where you've died', and then we were in space."

"I'm so jealous." Ned leans his chin into his hand. His elbow is propped up on the lab table. "I've always wanted to go to space. What's it like?"

And then Peter waxes poetic about nebulas and stars and galaxies that had flit by the windows of the ship in the blink of an eye. It takes up most of the rest of the class period.

* * *

Mr. Harrington pulls him aside after class. "Peter, do you have an explanation for why you were in my room last Friday while I was out? Flash told me you said you had permission."

"I didn't say that," Peter says. Then he mumbles, "I just implied it."

Mr. Harrington frowns. "Detention, Parker."

* * *

MJ shows up at the detention that afternoon, and Peter has this fleeting thought that maybe she came to this one because she knew he would be there and wanted to keep him company.

_Don't be stupid, Peter, _he thinks. _She's just looking for people to sketch._

But he thinks it's kind of nice to have her there anyway, even though they don't talk much—they just sit a couple of desks apart from each other, Peter working on math homework and MJ focused on her sketchbook, both of them biding their time until the coach overseeing detention tells them they can leave.

Then detention is over.

They stand outside at the front of the school waiting for their respective rides home, and what Peter does next is not his fault. It's the sun's fault, because how is Peter supposed to _not _be reduced to incoherence by the way the golden sunset-light makes MJ look like she's glowing?

"You're pretty," Peter says, faster than he can think about what he's saying. Then his eyes widen and he adds, "Cool. Um—you're pretty cool."

MJ raises an eyebrow. "Thanks," she says. "I think you're pretty, too."

Peter's never been called pretty before. His thoughts short-circuit a little bit, and he can feel his face heat. _She thinks I'm pretty! _he thinks, frantic, and it's like alarms are blaring in his head. He needs to evacuate from this situation.

Why is it that he can fight supervillains just fine, but he can't talk to a girl he likes without getting tongue-tied? That seems unfair.

"Haha, thank you. I have to go. Bye," Peter says. He pretends Aunt May has just text him that she's down the block and walks quickly away. He'll swing home. It's easier.

"And then I told her she was _pretty_," Peter says, putting emphasis on the last word, as if he's sharing something dire. "Can you believe that? I'll never be able to talk to her again."

Natasha sets her mug down. She and Peter are sitting across from each other in the compound's kitchen, which has become something of a routine for them. "I don't see the problem here. Don't you like her?"

Peter lets out a strangled dramatic noise. "Of course I like her! That's why I can't talk to her."

Natasha smiles at him, fond, like he's a puppy that's just done something cute. "Listen," she says, "we're already playing matchmaker for one pair of dorks. Why don't we add you and MJ to that list?"

Peter isn't a fan of the implication that he and MJ are a pair of dorks, but he knows to accept an offer of help when one is extended to him, so he agrees. But he still wants to seek a second opinion—maybe from Tony.

And, speaking of Tony….

Things are better now that Tony knows. Peter had been worried that something would change between them if Tony knew—that their comfortable mentor-mentee dynamic would be ruined—but when he sees Tony again, it's not awkward.

If anything, things are better than they've ever been. Peter doesn't have to explain himself anymore if he wants to call Tony at weird times to hear Tony's voice and reassure himself that Tony's alive, and Tony has been a little more considerate than usual about keeping the door to his lab open and answering his phone.

Peter hopes that consideration carries over to not making fun of Peter for what he's about to ask. They're working together in Tony's lab, as per routine, and Peter says, "Mr. Stark, I have a question. But you have to promise that you won't laugh."

Tony raises an eyebrow. "Interesting. Go on."

"How do I ask someone out?" Peter asks. "You have a lot of experience with that kind of thing, right?"

Tony blinks, taken aback. "Okay, that is not where I was expecting that to go," he says. He puts down the tech he'd been working on. "Geez, kid."

After taking a second to gather his thoughts, he says, "Peter, you should not model your love life after mine. If anything, before you do something you should ask yourself, 'What would Tony Stark do?' And then you should do the opposite of whatever that thing is. I think that's a good general life rule."

"Does that mean you don't want me to go to MIT after all?" Peter asks, because they both know Tony is the one who's been slipping college pamphlets into Peter's backpack when he thinks the teenager's not looking.

"Touché."

* * *

In somewhat related news, the latest stage in Operation Ironcap (which Peter still thinks needs a better name) is underway. This time Natasha is the mastermind behind their plans.

"I've known Steve and Tony for years," she says, when Peter brings it up. "I think I know each of their weaknesses."

* * *

On the other side of the compound, Steve hovers by the kitchen counter. He had planned on walking down the hallway past the kitchen to his room, but something had caught his eye to make him stay: papers strewn out on the countertop next to a steaming mug of fresh black coffee.

Steve has a hunch about who these things belong to, but a glance over his shoulder confirms that Tony is nowhere in sight. Odd.

Steve steps closer to get a better look at the papers. There, drawn in crisp, clean pen strokes, are sketches of things Steve doesn't understand but appreciates on an aesthetic level. Robotic arms. Propulsors. Hi-tech-looking rectangles.

_Tony must've done these, _Steve thinks. It's not a surprise, but it's not something he had expected, either. The thought of Tony sketching in his lab—thoughtfully making line after line, each of them inspired by brilliant insights into tech that no one in the world has had before—makes Steve feel flustered in a way that he can't explain. Invention is a kind of art, and Steve sometimes thinks that Tony is one of the most impressive artists of the past hundred years.

Tony's weakness comes next.

"Did you make these?" Steve asks, gesturing at the papers with his hand, when Tony comes back from the bathroom.

"Yes." Tony flashes Steve a suspicious look and reaches for his coffee mug. It leaves behind a pale brown ring on the corner of a sketch of something that resembles an arc reactor. "Peter and Nat kicked me out of the lab, so I had to come in here to work."

"They're amazing," Steve says. He sounds totally sincere. "You have real talent, Tony."

"Oh," Tony says. He takes a sip of his coffee to mask the way his face flushes. "Thanks."

* * *

"You were right," Peter says, glancing away from the security footage FRIDAY is streaming to them to look at Natasha, who's leaning back in her chair with her legs propped up on the table in front of her. They're sitting together in the lab with a tablet propped up on the table between them.

Natasha smiles. "Does that surprise you?"

* * *

Thor confronts Peter after the Asgardians have been parked at the compound for a week. "I hear that you have a project. I'd like to help."

"Oh," Peter says. He's initially caught off guard, but then he remembers that he'd recruited Bruce to help with the "research" project for "school", and it would make sense for the doctor to have told Thor about it. "I'd, uh, I'd appreciate that. Did you hear from Dr. Banner?"

Thor's brow furrows. "No, from Natasha. Why would Banner be involved?"

Peter has lost track of what's going on. "What are you talking about? I'm doing a project on the Avengers for school."

"Oh," Thor says. This is clearly news to him. "Wait, Banner found out about that before I did?"

"Sorry, Mr. Odinsson! I meant to ask you, there just hasn't been a good time, and you're so cool that I was kind of intimidated—"

"That's alright, then," Thor says, mollified. "And I was referring to your other project—the one with Captain America and Iron Man. There seems to be something very intense going on between them, and I want to offer my help. My services."

"Your services," Peter repeats.

"Yes. I'm very good at encouraging budding romances. Just ask Heimdall. I got him a date once."

"Y-Uh, you did what?"

"Of course it didn't end well, because she was a warrior goddess sworn to celibacy and he was married to his job guarding the Nine Realms, but you know how it goes."

Peter doesn't think he does. But he sees an opportunity to ask, "Do you think you could teach me how to talk to a girl I like?"

"The secret to charming someone," says Thor, with the air of someone imparting ancient wisdom, "is to speak softly and carry a big hammer."

Peter laughs. "Are you serious?"

Thor crosses his arms. "If you don't want my advice, I can take it elsewhere."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Odinsson, it's just—where would I even find a big hammer? It's not like there's a Mjølnir lying around."

A dark look comes over Thor's face. "Don't remind me."

* * *

Peter works up the courage to ask MJ out. Eventually. There are no hammers involved—it's just the two of them in detention (again), because Peter had deliberately gotten caught skipping P.E. for the opportunity to talk to MJ without their Academic Decathlon teammates (especially Flash) being in the way.

In hindsight it was a dumb strategy, because he had no way of knowing if MJ would even show up, but she does.

Peter leaves his second detention of the week with MJ's number in his phone and plans to go on a date that weekend. _!, _he thinks.

Peter calls Ned as soon as he gets home and, before his best friend can even get out a _hello, _says, "I did it!"

Peter's practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. He has too much energy to sit down. Phone pressed to his ear, he eyes the wall behind his desk and contemplates using his spider-powers to climb up it.

Maybe that wouldn't be enough, though—maybe what he needs is to go out swinging from skyscraper to skyscraper and let the rush of adrenalin he gets from that carry him through this she-said-yes euphoria.

Ned asks on the other end of the line, "Did what?"

Peter's smiling so wide that his cheeks kind of hurt. "I asked MJ to go out on a date with me."

_"Dude," _Ned says.

"I know!" Peter maybe dents his phone a little with the force of his grip. (Sometimes super-strength has its downfalls.)

Then Ned says, "You have to tell me everything."

And Peter spends the next half-hour hanging upside down from the ceiling and spilling the details.

* * *

Peter checks his reflection in the mirror one last time—maybe; he's checked it one last time several times in the past minute, so his credibility where that's concerned is waning—and straightens his shoulders.

Would now be a good time for a self-pep talk?

"You can do this," Peter tries. He gives himself an encouraging look. "You're Peter Parker. You've fought hardened criminals and won. Compared to that, this should be easy."

He tries to muffle the voice in his head that argues that MJ is way more intimidating than hardened criminals. Hardened criminals, after all, don't smile at you and call you pretty.

"That's a good point," Peter says to his mirror-self.

Aunt May calls out from another room, "Peter, are you talking to someone?"

"Uh," Peter says. He makes eye contact with his startled reflection. Then, raising his voice so it will carry, he answers, "No!"

Soon after that, it's time to go. Peter meets May in the living room to say goodbye and promise that he'll be back before curfew, et cetera.

"How do I look?" Peter asks. He tucks his hands into his pockets. Hopefully he doesn't look how he feels, because 'nervous wreck' isn't the vibe he's going for.

May reaches out a hand to smooth some of his hair back. The half-proud, half-sad smile she gets on birthdays makes an appearance, and she says, a little wistful, "Like you're growing up."

"May," Peter complains, looking away.

She laughs. "Sorry for getting sentimental on you. It's my job."

"I thought your job involves going to an office," Peter says.

May finishes smoothing his hair and stands back to look at him. "I can have multiple jobs."

* * *

Fury's doorbell rings at eight o'clock on a Wednesday night. He's halfway through the season finale of Dog Cops, and when he pauses it to answer the door, Sergeant Barkley is preparing to question a terrier suspected of stealing millions from powerful businesswoman Pupper Paws. The entire season has been building to this climactic moment.

So Fury is more than a little peeved about having to get up to open the door, but he does it.

And then he freezes. Standing on his doorstep is someone he hasn't seen in twenty years. Fury's mouth feels dry when he says, "Carol."

"Fury," Carol says back. She has a duffel bag tossed over her shoulder, casual-like. As if she's a friend visiting for the weekend instead of a superpowered space traveler here to help with an emergency that could have world-changing consequences.

Fury notes that she hasn't visibly aged in the time since he's seen her. Carol looks the same: her hair is the same color and the same length, and she's wearing the same kind of band shirt under a denim jacket. He also recognizes the face she's making now from a conversation they'd had before she left; she had looked the same way right before teasing him about Goose. Carol squints at something on his shirt and asks, "Is that cat fur?"

Fury glances down. He frowns when he spots the little orange hairs clinging to the cotton. "Damn it, Chewie," he says, mostly to himself. Then, glancing back up at Carol: "It's flerken fur, actually."

Carol brightens. "I knew you would keep him."

Fury scowls. "Of course I kept him. He would have been a danger to the outside world."

She smiles. "And you liked him."

Fury makes an ambivalent noise. He opens the door wider and gestures for Carol to come in, which she does.

As she scans over the interior of his house, Fury says, "You didn't tell me before you left that flerkens can reproduce asexually. Or that their lifespans are so long." Fury nods in the direction of the fur ball curled up on his couch. "I'm calling this one Chewie."

"Like Chewbacca?"

"It fits. He gets hair everywhere."

Carol pets behind Chewie's ears, and the flerken starts to purr. "That's perfect."

Then she turns back to face him, and the conversation seems to take on a new weight.

"Why did you contact me, Nick?" Carol's voice goes low and serious. Her eyes when Fury meets them are concerned. "I know you wouldn't have used the transmitter unless there was a real emergency."

Fury sighs. "I hope it's not a real emergency. If my source is correct, we've got a huge problem on our hands." He sits down on the couch and gestures for her to take a seat. "I'll tell you what I know."

Carol sits.

Fury begins by asking, "Have you ever heard of someone called Thanos?"

* * *

Peter stands outside the doorstep of his and May's apartment building, bracing himself for what the evening will bring (which, as far as he can tell, will probably be awkward dinner conversation and so much blushing that he becomes a safety hazard and MJ will need to find a fire extinguisher).

That's when his phone rings.

He doesn't check the caller ID before answering. "MJ?" Peter asks, heart in his throat, thinking _what if she's canceling the date, what if this was all an elaborate prank—_

"No," Fury says. "This is Fury. Peter, it's time."

And Peter feels like the roller coaster his life has become has finally begun its descent down that steep drop, so now all he can do is hold on tight and try not to throw up. Because he knows what _it's time _means.

Carol has arrived, and Thor is already waiting in one of the spare rooms at the compound. Most of the Avengers have reassembled.

It's time to go find Thanos.

* * *

"Thank you," Peter says, when he sees Carol. Her hair is longer now, but she is the same woman he remembers from the battlefield, looking down at him with a kind of reassuring confidence.

"For what?" Carol arches an eyebrow.

Peter shifts. It's kind of awkward to thank someone for saving you when that's a thing that hasn't happened yet. It would be weird to say _I hope you never have to find out. _Instead he settles on, "Uh, thank you for your service. You were in the Air Force, right?"

"I was." Carol smiles. She glances between Peter and Fury. "And now I'm part of whatever this is. Where are we going next?"

Carol and Fury both look to Peter, who realizes with a jolt that he's the one calling the shots. He wipes a sweaty hand on his nicest pair of jeans—this is definitely not how he had expected tonight to go—and says, "Um. I guess we should assemble the Avengers and see if they have any questions."

* * *

The team has a lot of questions.

"So who is this Thanos guy, anyway?" Sam asks.

Rhodey raises a hand. "Didn't you just get back from space? Why are you going back out there so soon?"

"Is it even a good idea to take the fight to Thanos?" Bruce asks. "What if we get there and we're undersupplied? We could be stranded."

Steve says, "Do you think we should bring in more people? T'challa? Wanda?"

Thor, standing up from his seat, asks, "When can we leave?"

"We need to find Thanos first," Tony says. "But Gamora says she may be able to help us with that."

That provides a nice segue into turning the conversation over to Gamora, who explains in more detail who Thanos is and why he's a threat to the universe.

Peter watches all of this and tries to pretend that he's not getting anxious. It's a good thing that he's not wearing his suit yet, because Karen would have already made some comment about slowing his heart rate.

* * *

Steve's acting weird when they leave the team meeting. He falls into step beside Peter, body language seeming strangely shifty, and says, "Peter, did you—?"

He cuts himself off.

Peter's curious. "Did I what?"

Steve looks away. "Nevermind."

Peter rolls his eyes. "I hate when people do that. You can't just be like 'oh, Peter, here's a mysterious question I want to ask you' and then not ask it. That's the worst. I'm going to be wondering about it all day."

Steve adjusts his shield where he's carrying it on his shoulder and says, mysterious, "I'll ask later."

And Peter would ask more about it, but they're kind of in the middle of something (defeating Thanos), so he lets it drop. For now.


	5. Interlude

The last stone to be put back whispers in Steve's hands when he moves to set it down. He feels the whisper as a trembly, tactile sensation running up his arm like a strange electric shock._ Make a choice...choice...choice…._

_He needs you._

Steve's chest tightens. His first thought—after _what the hell, these things can talk?_ —is of Bucky, still adapting to the twenty-first century. Steve had promised him the end of the line. No matter how much Steve wishes he could stay in the past (because the stone must have picked up on the idea nagging at the back of his mind, and there is no part of him that wants to live in a future without Tony or Natasha or—well, without a lot of things), he feels a duty to go back for Buck.

The whisper turns into a jittery almost-laugh. _The other 'he'...Tony. Bucky will be there also...also...also…._

"Tony?" Steve asks. His fingers feel numb. He's probably been holding the stone's container for too long. "He's dead."

Steve feels the vibrations in each syllable as the stone says, _He doesn't have to be. You can save him...save him...save him…._

And there's really no choice at all.

I can't believe I'm taking directions from a stone, Steve thinks, bemused.

Still. When his five seconds are up, he's not back on the launchpad.

(At least it won't be the first mysterious disappearance the Avengers—or what's left of them, anyway—have dealt with since Tony's funeral. The Parker kid has been missing for days now. Maybe he needs Steve's help, too.)

* * *

The stone had given him the impression of a date to go back to, but this time when Steve goes back it doesn't go according to plan.

When he'd been returning the infinity stones to their rightful places in the time stream, it had been a quick in-and-out, getting the job done and then getting away from the scene before someone could see him and connect the dots about the simultaneous existence of two Captain Americas.

When Steve goes back now, it feels as if he's reduced to atoms and then jammed forcibly back into the body of his past self. Steve wakes up with a jolt, hand reaching up to grasp at his chest, out of breath, disoriented. There's a familiar lurching feeling. He swings his legs over the side of the bed he woke up in—he's distantly aware that he's in a dingy motel room—and staggers to the bathroom so he can throw up into the toilet.

It's not his finest moment.

Steve would laugh at the absurdity of the situation that he's found himself in, but he can't focus on anything other than the disgusting taste in his mouth, so he shelves that idea. He stands up—gripping the counter for support, because he feels sick and off-balance and _oh God what did he just agree to_ —and does his best to clean himself up with water from the sink.

He startles when he sees his reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. It's...definitely confirmation that he's in his old body, the one he'd had before everything with Thanos happened. The beard that he'd grown out to make himself less recognizable is back. So is the messy, too-long hair and the pinched expression that had become his go-to while on the run.

Steve winces at the reminder of that time in his life. _This_ time, he guesses, since he's living it again now. He doesn't know if it was worse than the five-year apocalypse he's just gone through, but it hadn't been pleasant. Decent places to sleep had been hard to come by when it wasn't safe to stay in one place long enough to keep a steady job, and the constant paranoia of being found out and imprisoned had taken its toll on him before he'd finally given up his pride and gone to Wakanda for help.

On the topic of imprisonment...since he woke up alone, he must not have broken the others out of it yet. He'll have to work on that.

Steve's grip on the sink handle when he goes to turn the water off is too hard. The handle snaps off in his hand, and he stares at it, nonplussed. There are new finger-shaped dents in the metal. Steve does laugh, then, because he's not sure what else he can do.

* * *

Three days later, there's a break-in at Raft Prison. Steve begins reassembling his team.

There's a phone call he has to make. When he has a moment alone, after, he pulls out a battered burner phone—if he was less anxious, the thought of what Tony would say if he saw it would make him smile—and dials.

In the seconds between dialling and waiting for Tony to pick up, Steve feels like he might stop breathing. There's a pressure building in his chest, painful, and he thinks, _there's no reason for him to pick up, I shouldn't expect anything, he won't want to hear from me, it's f —_

"Rogers," Tony says, flat, the first word Steve's heard from him since watching him die.

"It's you," says Steve. His voice cracks on the 'you'. And, alright, he'd been aware that in this time Tony is still alive, of course he'd been aware of that, but it's one thing to know that on an intellectual level and another thing entirely to hear proof. Tony's alive. He's alive. He's _alive_, again, miraculously, and Steve is embarrassingly grateful for it. "You're—Tony. You—"

Tony sounds impatient. "Yes, I know. It's me. I am the only one with access to this highly classified number. Why are you calling, Steve?"

Steve clears his throat. "Tony. I—"_...love you. Missed you. Feel sick at the thought of never seeing you again._ " —I'm so, so sorry. I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry about everything that's happened. I know things are—complicated. But I want to come home." There's a pause. He tacks on, "Is that—would that be alright with you?"

A long silence on the other end of the line. Steve's heart is beating unusually fast. (It's usually as steady as a metronome.) He's hyperaware of how tightly he's holding the burner phone, because the last thing he wants is to crush it like he crushed the sink handle and end the call before he gets an answer.

Then—finally, finally—Tony says, "Okay."


	6. Chapter 5

A/N: I have a few readers over here who didn't realize this was a Steve/Tony fic when they started reading, so I feel like I should say that their relationship is addressed in this chapter. If Steve/Tony isn't your cup of tea but you still want to see the plot resolved, maybe skip those scenes.

* * *

Michelle Jones is standing at the door of her apartment when her phone buzzes. It's a text from Peter.

**Peter Parker** _ 6:45 _

hey mj i'm sosososososososo sorry abt this, but something came up and i won't be able to make it :((( family emergency

MJ rolls her eyes. "That boy."

_Must be Spider-Man again, _she thinks. She hopes it's nothing too dangerous.

* * *

The battle with Thanos is eerily similar to the last time around. Afterwards, Peter will do his best to forget the details (he has enough nightmare material already, thanks), but he will remember running—exhaustion—the heat from the blasts of nearby explosions and the ringing in his ears if he got too close to one—his heart beating too-fast in his chest—being rescued by Carol—lightning—web fluid—exhaustion—

And then this, which he will never forget:

"I am inevitable," Thanos says. A slow, ugly smirk comes over his face.

Peter flinches. This is it. This is the moment. Thanos doesn't have the completed gauntlet this time around, but Peter has this vivid memory of Tony's reply and then a flash of white light—

Tony grins. He keeps his eyes on Thanos and says, "And I am going home after this."

That's Steve's cue. He uses the distraction Tony provides to knock Thanos in the throat with his shield while Thor and Carol swoop in to restrain him.

Peter looks away for the part that comes next, not wanting to see Thor behead Thanos. Instead Peter watches Gamora wince, and he feels a pang of sympathy for her. She'd led them to Thanos, and doing one's duty for the greater good doesn't erase the guilt of betraying a loved one, no matter how justified it is.

And then it's over.

Peter flings himself at Tony. The metal of the Iron Man suit is hard when he collides with it, but Peter doesn't even care. It's over. It's _over. _The words repeat in Peter's head like a mantra, which almost helps them sink in. "We did it, Mr. Stark," Peter says into Tony's shoulder. "We won."

And this time when he says it, it really does feel true.

Tony smiles. "Yeah. Yeah, we did."

Peter lets himself cling for a moment. He's earned it, he thinks. He wants to enjoy the post-victory adrenaline rush while he can.

"It feels like that was too easy," Peter says, pulling back from the hug and eyeing Thanos' corpse.

"Please don't jinx it." Tony shakes his head. "I'll be happy if we're done with potentially-world-ending conflict for the foreseeable future. I've had it up to _here"— _he makes a gesture indicating a very high level—"with solving problems where the fate of the planet hangs in the balance. If we only have to fight jello monsters and weirdos who traipse through Manhattan in shark costumes from now on, I'll be content."

Peter's curious. "Jello monsters?"

"Don't ask," Tony says, making a face. "I was cleaning bits of gelatin out of my armor for days."

Steve steps up beside them. "I remember that."

Tony's eyes seem to soften when he turns to look at Steve, and Peter feels uncomfortably like he's intruding on a private moment. He glances away.

* * *

There are many things Peter doesn't know about the way things were before the Avengers split up. Sometimes that's because they're not things that his older teammates would willingly share with anyone who wasn't there—like how, in the weeks after the Chitauri incident, it wasn't unusual for them to run into each other in the common areas of the tower during those strange hours between night and morning, because they'd all had trouble sleeping then. Sometimes Peter doesn't know because he hasn't thought to ask.

But sometimes they're things that no one else knows, either.

This is one of those things:

Before the Accords, Steve and Tony had been in love. Almost. Neither of them had said it yet, and neither of them had examined the feeling enough to label it, but they had both felt it—or at least something that could grow into it.

It was present in the way Tony started brewing enough coffee for two in the morning before going down to his workshop—some for himself, some to leave out for Steve to find when he got back from his obscenely early runs—and in the way Steve started taking extra care of his technology on missions because knew it made Tony happy to see it return in tact. It was present in the not-quite-flirting and the too-long glances and the way they couldn't be in a room together without finding ways to catch the other's attention.

It was something that lingered mostly unacknowledged between them, bright with potential, even as the tension mounted and the team began to break apart.

They had been on the cusp of starting something, and then—

Well.

* * *

Everyone goes out to eat a celebratory post-battle meal as a team after returning to Earth. Peter suggests Delmar's, because Delmar has the best sandwiches in Queens and also Peter feels like if anyone deserves to have the Avengers give their business some free publicity, it's Delmar.

There's something knowing in Mr. Delmar's expression when he takes Peter's order. As he hands back the change, he asks, quiet, so only the two of them overhear, "Peter?"

"No, uh—I'm Spider-Man. Not Peter. Who's Peter?" Peter stammers.

Mr. Delmar winks at him. "You're doing good work, Spider-Man."

Peter smiles underneath his mask. "Thanks, Mr. D."

* * *

Now that Thanos has been defeated, the next major item on the agenda is taking care of the rogue Avengers' legal problems, a process that had already been underway. They try to handle it as discreetly as possible.

When pictures of the team eating together and information about the legal proceedings inevitably leak to the press, social media blows up.

_2:23 pm _

**The Daily Bugle **_dailybugle _

Webbed menace spotted with Captain America and his team of fugitives…. Is this proof of a criminal conspiracy?

_2:28 pm _

**Flash **_ Sp1derFan _

_ dailybugle _Spider-Man has done nothing wrong, ever, in his life. Leave him alone.

_2:30 pm _

**my friends call me MJ **_ michellejones _

_ Sp1derFan _go home, flash, your fanboy is showing

_2:34 pm _

**steve rogers is my husband **_ lindsayrogers _

oh my god. cap's back? since when?

_2:35 pm _

**Bea [bee emoji] **_ starspangledfan _

_ lindsayrogers _!

_2:36 pm _

**Bea [bee emoji] **_ starspangledfan _

_ lindsayrogers _also...is that a beard? #TeamCapsBeard #wow #Didn'tKnowINeededThis

_2:45 pm _

**kait **_ teamletsallbefriends _

_ lindsayrogers __starspangledfan _um, guys...I feel like we're ignoring the international incident-shaped elephant in the room

_4:14 pm _

**BuzzFeed **_ BuzzFeed _

14 Reasons Why Team Cap Deserves to be Pardoned

[article attached

_5:53 pm _

**The New York Times **_ nytimes _

This could be the beginning of a trial unlike anything we've seen before, says legal expert in response to new Avengers revelation. More updates to come as this story develops.

[article attached]

* * *

"Tony, I have to tell you something," Steve says. They're back at the compound, and most of the team has gone to their respective rooms to nap/"get the hell away from you people, no offense" (to quote Sam) after the battle and round-trip journey.

Steve and Tony are sharing a drink in the living room. (The alcohol does nothing for Steve, but he'd wanted an excuse to speak to Tony alone and knew an opportunity when he saw one.)

"Why do people keep saying that to me?" Tony asks. "Seriously. I know we just fought a Titan, but is there something else going on?"

"Yes, actually." Steve looks amused, like he already knows what Tony's reaction will be and he's looking forward to it.

(Tony determines to keep a straight face, even if it's only out of spite.)

Steve says, "I time-traveled here from five years in the future."

Tony can deal with this. He takes a sip of his drink and asks, casual, "You, too?"

Steve chuckles. "Peter did, too, didn't he? I knew it."

"Yep," Tony says. "He told me before we left."

Steve seems to hesitate before replying. "Did Peter also tell you about…?"

"My death?" Tony takes another drink. He's not looking at Steve when he says, "Yeah. He did. I've been trying not to think about it."

"Fair enough," Steve says. Then, after a beat: "You were—are—a hero, you know. If that helps. I'm so glad that didn't happen here, but—I think you should know that it meant something."

"Thanks."

There's a lull in the conversation.

"Was there anything else that you wanted to tell me?" Tony asks, to break the silence. There's a kind of unresolved tension in the air. The distance between where they're each sitting across from each other on the couch is something they're both very aware of; Tony notices that if he moved his hand a bit to the left it would brush against Steve's.

"Now that you mention it," Steve says, leaning closer. "There is."

"Don't leave me in suspense," Tony jokes.

Steve smiles. "I think you know."

"Ooh," Tony says. He starts to smile back. "Are you going for a Han and Leia thing? If so, I'm proud of you. I'll say 'I know'—"

Steve tries to cut in with a fond, "Tony—"

Tony keeps going. "But first you'll say—"

"I love you." Steve says, interrupting.

Tony takes a second to just look at him. When he looks at Steve, Tony sees the man who he'd fought for and alongside and against; the man who makes him think that maybe it would be worthwhile to give up fighting. Most of all, Tony sees his best friend.

He takes a step closer. "I know."

They smile at each other for a long moment, before Tony adds, "Also, I told you so."

* * *

When Peter sees them again, it's breakfast time and they're in the communal kitchen at the compound. Tony's blinking bleary-eyed down at a cup of coffee and Steve keeps sneaking fond glances at him while making toast.

_Aw, _Peter thinks.

He remembers something. "Oh! Hey, Steve, what was that question you wanted to ask me yesterday?"

Steve doesn't look up from the toast he's buttering. "I was just going to ask if you had traveled back in time, too."

Peter nearly drops his mug. It's a good thing that he catches it before it hits the countertop, because if his favorite blue mug broke because of this Peter would never let Steve forget about it. "You _what?" _

Tony laughs.

Peter sends an accusing look his way. "Mr. Stark, you were in on this?"

Tony puts his hands up, placating. "I didn't know until yesterday, Pete, I swear."

Peter huffs.

* * *

Later that day, Peter spots Thor sitting alone on a bench outside and goes over to see if he wants company.

"Are you okay, Mr. Odinsson?"

"Yes! I'm fine," Thor says, straightening up. He doesn't look okay. His expression is as somber as Peter's ever seen it, and that's kind of unnerving—Peter has only known the lighthearted side of Thor, so catching the god at a contemplative moment feels odd. "I was taking a moment to mourn the loss of Asgard. Now that our journey is over and Thanos slain, I must start making arrangements for her refugees."

Peter sits down beside him.

"I'm sorry about your home," Peter says. He means it. When he thinks of how he came back in time to save the world from Thanos but not soon enough to prevent the destruction of Thor's home realm, Peter feels a strange guilt. "I wish there was something I could do."

There's a pause, but then Thor smiles. The crinkling it causes around the corners of his eyes shifts the eyepatch. "I appreciate the thought," he says. "But no one can change what has happened. The only thing to do is move forward. Asgard is a people, and for now my people are safe. We will recover."

"Also, um," Peter says. "I was talking to Rocket, and he said he might have something to help with your eye."

* * *

Peter goes back to school, and he realizes that he'll have to explain himself to MJ. He asks her to meet him in the room where the Decathlon team practices during a period when Peter knows they both have free time and Mr. Harrington will be out of the room. (They don't exactly have permission to be there, but Peter doesn't think MJ will mind some light rule-breaking.)

And now here they are, MJ sitting on top of a desk with her legs swinging down over the side while Peter tries not to fidget as he stands across from her.

She raises an eyebrow at him, expectant.

Peter braces himself for her reaction. "MJ...I'm Spider-Man."

He waits for her to say something.

She keeps looking at him.

He keeps waiting.

Finally, MJ asks, "That's it?"

Peter's nonplussed. "What do you mean 'that's it?'"

"I knew that had something to do with your 'family emergency'," MJ says. "You're a terrible liar, Peter. I've known you were Spider-Man since last year."

"Oh," Peter says. He has so many questions. How did she know? When did she figure it out? Does she approve of it? But the most pressing one: "So...does this mean you still want to go out with me?"

"Yes, loser." MJ smiles when she says it, and Peter admires how she manages to make 'loser' sound like a term of endearment. _She's so cool. _

* * *

Peter and MJ eventually—finally—go on their date. Somehow word gets out to the team, and by the time MJ shows up to walk with Peter to the restaurant, Peter's apartment is filled with well-meaning busybody superheroes who all want to give him last minute words of advice.

Natasha and May keep sharing proud/conspiratory looks that make Peter nervous. Tony wants to take pictures.

"It's not like we're going to the prom, Mr. Stark." Peter, embarrassed, turns to apologize to MJ, who stands beside him in the doorway. He's happily surprised when instead of mocking him MJ pales and says, "Peter. Oh my God. That's the Black Widow."

Peter gets it. He really does. And something about seeing MJ starstruck makes him like her even more, which is terrifying, since he thought he already liked her as much as it was possible to like a person. He smiles and says, "I know, right?"

Tony's disgruntled. "I'm not impressive? C'mon. Peter, tell your girlfriend how impressive I am."

Peter grins. "I can't help it if you don't know how to incapacitate a man with your pinky finger, Mr. Stark."

"Yeah, Tony," Natasha says, glancing sideways at him with a smug smile.

Tony looks betrayed.

Steve, who'd been in the kitchen, walks back just in time to see this. He comes over to Tony and says, playfully but also so sincere that it's honestly kind of painful to watch, "I'm impressed by you."

And Tony blushes—not much, just enough that it's noticeable—which. Wow. Peter never thought he would see that. He didn't know Mr. Stark was physically capable of blushing. (Until a few weeks ago Peter didn't think it was physically possible to time travel either, though, so he's been making an effort to be more open-minded.)

Sam rolls his eyes from where he's sitting on the couch. "Can we let the kids go now?"

* * *

The day of the field trip—the one that Peter should have stayed on the bus for—arrives, and Peter feels this building anticipation for a calamity that never happens, because of course it doesn't. He's taken care of it.

That doesn't stop him from fidgeting so much on the bus that Ned leans into him and says, "Hey, do you need me to create a distraction so you can leave? Because I'll do it."

Peter loves Ned so much. "Thanks, but no. I'll be fine."

And he is fine, most of the way through the museum tour. But then Peter sees something suspicious out of the corner of his eye—there's fighting going on outside that's visible through the sleek floor-to-ceiling museum windows.

"Hey, Ned? Uh. I could use that distraction."

* * *

After he slips his mask on and sneaks outside to investigate, Peter finds a dark-haired girl single-handedly fighting off four men dressed in some kind of red uniform. She has it mostly handled, but Spider-Man joining in speeds things up. Soon the two of them are standing together in the alley where Peter found her, surrounded by unconscious men who hopefully won't stir anytime soon, and she tugs on Peter's arm to pull him away from the scene.

"Sorry about that," she says, more lightly than Peter would expect from someone fresh from a dramatic fistfight on a street in New York. "I tried to lose them a couple days ago, but Masque must have found me."

"Masque?" Peter asks.

"It's a long story," she says. "Madame Masque is a criminal on the West Coast who I have—er, will have—some history with. Her men followed me here from California. But they're not important; I came here to talk to you."

"What?" Peter tries not to feel too freaked out. "We've never met before."

"Let's fix that," she says, brightly, holding out a hand. "Hi, Peter. I'm Kate Bishop." Kate tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear with her free hand. "We need to talk."'

Peter shakes the offered hand, still reeling. "Talk about what? Why do you know my name?"

"I know that you time traveled," Kate says. "And I can tell you how it happened."

Peter tenses. "How do you…?"

"I can explain," Kate promises. "Not here, though."

They move somewhere more private to continue the conversation. Which means that they end up sitting together on top of a skyscraper after Peter swings them there.

"Before I start, I should say that this is going to be a lot to take in," Kate says. "It's kind of unbelievable."

Peter can't stifle his laugh. "After everything that's already happened, I don't know what you could say to surprise me. I've already traveled half a decade and fought a giant purple alien."

Kate grins. "You may take that back in a minute."

She begins to share her side of the story that Peter has been living through, starting with her life in the original timeline.

Kate and a team of other teenaged heroes had found each other in the years after the Decimation and become the Young Avengers—that's what they called themselves, anyway, though they weren't affiliated with the Avengers that remained. The team included Cassie Lang, Scott Lang's daughter, who had been inspired by her father's legacy; Teddy Altman, a Skrull prince who had lived most of his life on Earth believing he was human; Billy Kaplan and Tommy Shepherd, the twin sons of Wanda Maximoff and Vision….

"Wait, what?" Peter doesn't understand. "Wanda and Vision have _kids _? And they're old enough to be teenagers in five years?"

Kate smiles wryly. "It's complicated. I'm not sure how much has changed since we altered the timeline, but if you've been struggling to contact them since you came back, it's probably because they're on their honeymoon. From what we can understand, Wanda and Vision had been planning to elope in Scotland and start a life together before everything with Thanos happened.

"When Vision died so Thanos could take the Mind Stone, Wanda nearly went mad with grief. Drawing on the residual energy that the Mind Stone left behind, she used her powers to warp reality, creating twin boys that would be a combination of her and Vision. But the Snap took her, and they were orphaned.

"Billy—who inherited a version of his mother's powers—unconsciously sent them back in time to around ten years before the Decimation. We're not sure how he did it, but we think it must have been fueled by some kind of survival instinct. The world after Thanos was dangerous to grow up in, and no one except for Wanda had known about the boys, so Billy and Tommy would have died within a few days if Billy hadn't taken them somewhere safe. The boys were adopted to separate families, and they only discovered each other and the circumstances of their birth as teenagers after they had lived through the Snap for a second time.

"That's how we knew that it was possible for Billy to use his powers to travel back years. Once we found out, everyone wanted to try to fix what had happened. We had all lost someone to Thanos; Cassie had to grow up without her dad, Teddy's mom was killed in a car accident when another driver disintegrated…also, I haven't mentioned it yet, but Loki brought the Tesseract forward to our time and joined us. He had been killed by Thanos in the original timeline, so he was very invested in changing things."

"Loki's on your team?" That's an important detail. Peter hadn't realized the story could get more shocking.

"Yes," Kate says, smiling at Peter's surprise. "He's been an important piece of our strategy since we've come back, too—Loki managed to send out a signal to transmit the location of the Asgardian vessel to the Avengers' spaceship."

"I…," Peter trails off. He would say that he had wondered about that, but he'd assumed that they had gotten lucky when Tony picked up on the Asgardians' signal that day. "Wow. I didn't realize."

"You weren't supposed to," says Kate. "Don't worry about it. When Billy sent us all back, he used his affinity with the Infinity Stones—most of his power is a combination of the Scarlet Witch's and residue from the Mind Stone, and he had access to the Tesseract from Loki—to ask to be taken to the best possible world. We landed in this one, and the stones told us that we would see the best outcome if we only helped from a distance."

"Thank you," Peter says, after a moment where he sits in silence letting what Kate's told him sink in. "For making this reality possible."

Kate bumps her shoulder against his. "We couldn't have done that without you." Then she adds, "If you ever want to come meet the rest of the team, you're welcome. We've been staying with Cassie's dad in San Francisco."

Peter's touched by the offer. "Thanks," he says. "But I think I might stay home for a while."

* * *

Peter jolts awake sometime before dawn. Rain falls heavily on the roof above him. He thinks he sees a flash of light in his peripheral vision, but it happens so fast that he can't be sure.

The scene feels familiar. Peter realizes with a kind of cold clarity that this is exactly like the day that he was sent back in the original timeline, only without the five year gap.

But...he had done it, hadn't he? Fixed things? There's no reason for the stones to pull him back again. Still, he's hit by a sudden paranoia that that's what's happening: that he's doomed to repeat the same horrible weeks over and over and over, and maybe it's like Ned said and this is like Groundhog Day—

_Calm down...down...down…, _Peter hears the voices of the stones whisper. _You have served your purpose. _

Peter's heart beats fast despite this reassurance. He thinks he should get up and make himself a glass of water. The stones hum encouragingly—Peter feels an encouraging vibe in the air, anyway, so he assumes that's what that is—and he takes that as a sign that they won't mind if he slips out of bed.

Peter only makes it as far as the end of the hallway before taking a stunned step back.

Mjølnir is on the floor of the living room. Just...lying there. In the middle of an apartment in Queens. Peter almost laughs, because he remembers thinking that this situation would never happen—especially since Mjølnir was supposed to have been destroyed.

And yet.

_Try it...try it...try it…, _the stones dare him. They sound amused. _You know you want to. _

Peter swallows. He moves closer to the hammer. It's unnaturally bright in the dark hallway, as if lit up from the inside by the power it contains. Peter wraps his fingers around the handle, and he imagines that he can taste electricity on the roof of his mouth. He pulls.

And it _works. _The hammer lifts up from the floor as easily as if it were a paperweight, and Peter tried not to let the rush of power make him dizzy. He doesn't think the hammer was made for someone whose body wasn't meant to wield lightning.

_Peter...Peter...Peter…, _the stones whisper. _You are worthy. You have accomplished your task. Choose a reward. _

"A reward?" Peter asks. He doesn't understand. He thought that five years of his life back and Tony Stark alive had been the reward. But, if they were offering something else….

_Yes…, _the stones whisper. _Anything…anything...anything…. _

Peter thinks about it. Looks down at the hammer he's holding. Makes a choice.

When Peter shares the news, Thor pulls him into a crushing hug and promises to have songs sung for him in the halls of Valhalla. The restoration of Asgard is nothing short of a miracle.

Peter's flattered at Thor's praise. He mumbles some kind of "you're welcome" and does his best to extract himself from the hug before he is actually crushed.

But, as he steps away, Peter remembers that there was a trade-off. It tempers his enthusiasm. He'd been offered one reward only; by choosing Asgard and its people, Peter had missed his chance to bring back Uncle Ben.

He'd been conflicted at first, weighing the benefits of seeing his uncle again against the welfare of a realm that he'd never been to, but ultimately Peter chose not to be selfish. Ben would understand.

_With great power... _Peter frowns. It's a relief to have the weight of the decisions he's had to make in the past few weeks off of his shoulders. After everything, he thinks that the responsibility of handling the power he has now is enough.

* * *

[ROLL CREDITS]

_Mid-Credit Scene: _

Sam pats Peter on the back. "You've got this. We're all rooting for you. Today, you're not just fighting for yourself; you're fighting for all of us."

Peter gives a solemn nod. He wonders if this is how Olympic athletes feel before their competitions; he can sense the weight of expectation on his shoulders. "I can do this."

"Good," Sam says, firm. "And know that no matter what happens today, you are a hero."

Peter nods again. He laughs, nervous, and looks over his shoulder at all of the Avengers waiting on the sidelines to watch. Bucky's grinning already; Bruce brought some kind of scientific device to measure what's about to happen; Tony sees that Peter is looking in their direction and gives a small wave.

Peter smiles and turns back to Sam. "Steve hasn't found out yet, right?"

"Everything's going according to plan," Sam says. "All you have to do is what you've been practicing. Remember, wait until you're within earshot of the group. Godspeed."

It's time.

Peter runs. He tries to keep his footfalls light so his approach won't be so loud and obvious, but mostly he focuses on speed, picking up more and more of it until it almost feels like he's flying.

He sees Steve up ahead—and, close by, the small audience they've gathered is hidden from view by some well-placed bushes. Perfect.

Peter runs faster—faster—until he's nearly caught up—

As he passes Steve, Peter looks over, grins, and says, "On your left."

* * *

A/N: Thank you for reading! I appreciate all of you, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also: if you'd like to read a spin-off one-shot in this universe starring Peter and Fury, I have one up on my ao3 account under the same username.


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